Maple Cookies and Candied Bacon, Oh My!

Oh my! may have been your first words after seeing theses pictures. I totally get it. I do. 

Vanilla Chip Maple Cookies from Taste of Home. The first time I made these, I thought they were my favorite candy, maple nut goodies, but in cookie form. The link will take you to the recipe I use but here are a couple of tweaks that I think would elevate this cookie even more. Toast the pecans before adding them to the dough and on top. A toasted pecan is just a gift and would add a bite of crunch. The second tweak would be to add a bit of coffee to the frosting, a la Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls. 

The next one with the bacon? Well, friends, this is something worth trying. This is what I call Candied Bacon. I used this recipe. What is happening on the right side of the photo is this- I dipped the candied bacon into melted chocolate. Yes, yes I did. A bunch of us did and none of us are sad about it. (Jessica and I hosted a shower for Danny's bride, Morgan, and served chocolate fondue.) My only advice about the candied bacon is to watch it very carefully towards the end of its baking time otherwise there is a high possibility your neighbors will witness you flying out the front door with a smoking baking sheet in an attempt to keep the smoke alarms silenced.   

(Also, let's do a little tiny handclap because I figured out how to post pictures again!)