I’m spending the holidays at my family’s cabin in the heart of Central Idaho snow country. And seeing how it was a balmy 9 degrees outside today, it seemed like the perfect day to stay inside and make bacon appetizers (via one of my favorite blogs, The Pioneer Woman).
The best thing about these bacon appetizers – other than them being tasty – is that they are incredibly easy to make. And the three simple ingredients (bacon, parmesan cheese, and club crackers) can be readily acquired most anywhere that you can purchase grocery items.
To mix things up a bit, I decided to use some freshly grated parmesan cheese because we happened to have some on hand. And for the bacon I used Schaller and Weber Double Smoked Bacon that I recently acquired from GermanDeli.com.
The double smoked nature of the Schaller and Weber bacon becomes very clear as you rip the package open and are greeted by a nice smoky scent rather than the raw scent that usually accompanies bacon. It also comes in slab form which is great because you can control the thickness of your bacon slices. But despite the deliciousness of the double smoked bacon, for purposes of this appetizer it actually would have been better if I had just purchased some standard thin sliced bacon from the grocery store. We don’t have a meat slicer at the cabin and it was difficult to get the slices really thin with just a knife (unfortunately my fingernail learned that the hard way).
The process for assembling the bacon appetizers is quite simple. You merely take a club cracker, sprinkle some parmesan cheese on top, wrap a piece of bacon around the cracker, and place it on a baking sheet. And even though the thicker bacon strips were kind of difficult to wrap around the crackers at first, after I put the appetizers in the oven for a few minutes the bacon softened enough that I could readjust any of the pieces that had come loose.
The Pioneer Woman suggests cooking the bacon appetizers at 250 degrees for 2 hours. But since our cabin is at an altitude of 5500 feet, and because the bacon was slightly cooked from the double smoking process, it only took me 1.5 hours to bake them this time.
While the appetizers were baking, I decided to go for a quick snowshoe around the property. It was partly cloudy because we’re supposed to get snow tonight, so unfortunately the skies weren’t the brilliant blue we had seen for the last couple days. But here’s a snapshot of our snowshoe trail with mountains and our lovely wood fence in the background (the wood fence is necessary mostly because our neighbors have some very curious horses that roam free on the surrounding property).
Because that photo turned out kind of dark, here’s a photo from yesterday just before sunset to give you another view of our breathtaking surroundings. It really will be hard to leave this place and return to the city at the end of this week.
After a couple laps on the snowshoes, I returned to the kitchen and removed the bacon appetizers from the oven. I placed them on a paper towel lined plate for a minute or so to drain the excess grease. Then we poured a few cocktails and enjoyed our fresh, hot bacon appetizers (and they were pretty much gone before they even had a chance to cool off).
What a wonderful way to celebrate the holiday season!