Maple Bacon Biscuit Bake

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Oh. My. Goodness.

These are awesome! And genius!

Maple candied bacon is awesomeness personified and I could eat an entire pound of it by myself. But added to a just-sweet-enough biscuit? There really aren't enough words to accurately describe this. I stopped dead in my tracks when I found this on King Arthur Flour's blog . A sticky bun with bacon??? I was intrigued and thought of little else until I made them a few days later.

The recipe calls for use of a product I had seen in King Arthur Flour's catalog but had not paid much attention to; Bakewell Cream. Listed on their website as the Maine equivalent of cream of tarter, I wasn't able to find it locally followed the substitution listed in the recipe.

Candied bacon is a gift from the culinary gods and something I love, love, love but don't make very often because it involves cooking the bacon in the oven. I know a lot of people prefer this method, but it makes me a little crazy. This recipe calls for oven cooking but I cut it into pieces before frying and then toss it all into a skillet and cook until crispy. Worked beautifully!

The cooled bacon is coated in a mixture of brown sugar, maple syrup, flour, and melted butter and then scattered across the bottom of an 8X8 pan. A simple biscuit dough is made by working cubed butter into a flour mixture and then splashing in milk or buttermilk to bring it together.

The dough is then dropped over the maple bacon and the baked until golden. Pull it out of the oven, flip it onto a serving plate and dive in. The biscuit is light and as I mentioned above, just sweet enough to enhance the sweetness of the bacon but not compete with it. The topping is sweet, salty, smoky, and chewy. These are the type of thing that you have to stop yourself from eating because they are so unexpectedly delcious!

Maple Bacon Biscuit Bake

King Arthur Flour

Syrup
1/2 pound bacon, cooked until medium-brown
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons melted butter

Biscuits
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons Bakewell Cream*
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) cold butter
1 cup cold milk or cold buttermilk
If you don't have Bakewell Cream, substitute 2 teaspoons baking powder and omit the baking soda.

Directions
1) Preheat the oven to 475°F. Lightly grease an 8" square or 9" round pan.

2) Syrup: Chop the cooked bacon into 1/2" pieces. Combine the bacon with the remaining syrup ingredients, stirring until well combined. Spread in the bottom of the prepared pan.

3) Biscuits: Whisk the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

4) Work in the butter until the mixture is crumbly; some larger, pea-sized pieces of butter may remain intact.

5) Add the milk or buttermilk, stirring to make a sticky dough.

6) Drop the dough in heaping tablespoonfuls atop the syrup in the pan. A tablespoon cookie scoop, slightly overfilled, works well here.

7) Bake the biscuits for 10 minutes. Turn the oven off, and leave them in the oven for an additional 5 to 10 minutes, until they're golden brown.

8) Remove the biscuits from the oven, and immediately turn the pan over onto a serving plate. Lift off the pan, and scrape any syrup left in the pan onto the biscuits. Pull biscuits apart to serve.

Yield: 16 small biscuits.