Maple-Bacon Macarons

Macaron ingredients:

• 1 cup confectioners sugar
• 3/4 cup almond flour
• 2 large egg whites (room temp.)
• Pinch of cream of tartar
• 1/4 cup superfine sugar
• Candied bacon bits

Directions:

1. Sift confectioners sugar and almond flour  (do not skip this step!). If necessary, use a food processor on the larger pieces that did not make it through the sieve and sift again. If you skip this step you will have lumpy cookies.
2. Using a large bowl and an electric mixer on high, beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Slowly  add the superfine sugar. (If you don't have superfine sugar, run some regular sugar through a food processor)
3. Continue mixing until stiff peaks form. This will take a few minutes, so be patient.
4. Gently fold in the almond flour and confectioners sugar with the egg whites using a spatula. Do not over mix or you will have flat cookies, but don't under mix or you will have a lumpy batter. Add food coloring (if desired, we didn't use any) and candied bacon at this point.
5. Transfer to a pastry bag or just use a Ziploc bag like we did to pipe the macarons. If you're good at estimating perfect circles, go for it freehand, but if you're not, do what we did. On a sheet of parchment paper, trace circles using anything you can find in the kitchen (we used the bottom of a McCormick spice bottle) with a pencil. Flip the parchment paper over so that the pencil marks are on the baking sheet and you should be able to see through. Pipe the macarons onto the parchment paper and instead of making a peak as if you were piping frosting onto a cupcake, keep it flat.
6. To remove air bubbles from the macarons, lift up the baking sheet a couple of inches off the counter top and drop it. Repeat a couple of times.
7. Leave the macarons out on the counter top to form a shell on the outer surface for at least 30 minutes. Use this time to preheat your oven to 375 F.
8. Put the macarons in the oven (if you have a convection oven, you can put two pans in the oven at the same time. If you don't have a convection oven, bake one pan at a time). Lower the oven temperature to 325 F. Bake until the tops are crisp, about 10-12 minutes, but ovens will vary. Raise the oven temperature to 375F and lower to 325F between batches.

Candied Bacon Ingredients:

• 1/2 pound of raw bacon (thick cut is best, but it doesn't matter)
• 1/8 cup brown sugar
• 1/8 cup maple syrup

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375F.
2. On a foil-lined pan, coat the bacon with the brown sugar and maple syrup.
3. Bake until crisp.
4. Using kitchen scissors, cut the bacon into small squares. You will only need about 1/4 cup of bacon bits for the macarons and about 1/2 cup for the filling. Eat the rest!

Cream Cheese Filling Ingredients

• 1 8oz package of cream cheese
• 1 cup confectioners sugar
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4-1/2 cup of bacon bits

Directions:
Let cream cheese and butter soften at room temperature. Use an electric mixer and cream the butter, cream cheese, and vanilla until well combined. Sift the powdered sugar and slowly add it. You may need to add more powdered sugar to thicken it. Stir in the bacon bits.

Assembly and Tips:

If you didn't over mix, you let the macarons sit for a while before putting them in the oven, and you baked them until they were done, you should have nice cookies with "feet" (that little rim of puffy stuff around the bottom of the cookie). Even if your macarons don't look perfect, assemble them anyway! They'll taste the same, ugly or not.
Take 2 similar sized cookies and use a piping bag to pipe the cream cheese filling onto one of them. Sandwich the cookies together gently, and you should have a beautiful, delicious macaron!

Have fun and thanks for reading!