Bacon Brownies

I wanted to bake something a little different this week, but didn't have loads of time to do something crazy. So instead I decided to put bacon in brownies :) Using bacon in sweet dishes is nothing new in America, but over in the UK, it's still pretty weird. The key is to make the bacon very crisp, so that it's not soft in the brownie. That, and if you can, use streaky bacon - I find it gets much crispier than standard rashers and imparts more bacon flavour.

Makes 20 brownies

Ingredients:

• 150g (2/3 cup) butter, plus extra for greasing
• 100g (1/2 cup) dark soft brown sugar
• 150g (3/4 cup) light soft brown sugar
• 75g (1/2 cup) chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans would work great)
• 50g (1/2 cup) cocoa powder
• 50g (3/8 cup + 1 tsp) ground almonds
• 150g (1 & 1/4 cups) plain flour (a gluten free plain flour would work equally well if you're gluten intolerant)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 eggs
• 75g (1/2 cup) dark chocolate chips
• 200g (1 cup) streaky bacon, finely chopped
• 3 tbsp maple syrup

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 180c (160c fan)/ 355F/ gas mark 4. Lightly grease a 20 x 20cm baking tray with butter and dust with plain flour.

2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stirring occasionally, until all of the butter has melted. In a separate frying pan, fry the bacon (in a little butter) for 3-5 minutes, until it becomes really crisp. Take off the heat and pour the maple syrup over the bacon. Stir through then pour onto a plate to cool.

3. Whisk the eggs with the vanilla, light soft brown and dark soft brown sugar until lighter in colour and it has at least doubled in volume. Sift the flour, cocoa powder and ground almonds onto this egg/sugar mixture, and pour over this the melted butter. Fold in, so that you can no longer see any flour speckles.

4. Add the chopped nuts, crispy bacon and chocolate chips. Fold in briefly to distribute the walnuts/bacon/chocolate evenly, then pour the mixture into the prepared tin.

5. Bake for 18-20 minutes, until the top is crisp, but when you shake the tin a little, the middle of the brownie wobbles a little.

6. Cool, slice into squares, and serve warm with ice cream for dessert, or at room temperature for an afternoon snack.

7. Enjoy!