Dark Chocolate Drizzled Bacon

today is a very special day folks. i bet the majority of you out there have been going about your day thinking it's just another thursday. one more day left in the week. yawn.

but, your life is about to change! are you ready for it?

my mother-in-law (god bless her) told me today is national chocolate covered anything day. that's right folks. today is the one day a year when you can put chocolate on any old thing and call it good. it's like this -  i think on the 8th day after some rest, god was hungry. he needed a little snack, a treat for all his hard work if you will. so, on the 8th day, god created chocolate and it was good. and once there was chocolate, all was right with the world.

today, in honor of this momentous national day, i find myself justified to do something i have been thinking about doing for some time now. today my friends i bring you (wait for it) chocolate covered bacon.

ok, i may have lost a few readers after that last sentence but those of you left, stay with me for a second. first of all, i know i am not the first person to try this. others have gone before me. others have created a bacon chocolate bar. it's right there on the shelves at wegmans for crying out loud. therefore i know this is not uncharted territory. (for the record, i didn't like the bacon bar - too much smokey flavor and the bacon was chewy, not crunchy - blech.) however, i knew it could be done well. i knew i would love it when done correctly.

think about it. have you ever had dark chocolate with a touch of sea salt? amazing, right? somehow the salt just makes the chocolate taste 100x more chocolaty and wonderful. (if you haven't had chocolate with sea salt, you must. soon. lindt excellence dark chocolate with a touch of sea salt. you will not be disappointed.) similarly, have you ever had a big stack of pancakes for breakfast drowning in maple syrup? perhaps you had a side of crispy bacon. and perhaps, just possibly, the bacon touched the maple syrup. perhaps you bit into the salty, crunchy, goodness and tasted that hint of sweetness and died a little.

ok, ok, i'll ease up on the dramatics. to make this delectable treat, you will need bacon and dark chocolate chips. that's it. the secret here (in my completely biased opinion) is to start with super crispy bacon. a poor, undercooked, limp piece of bacon with wilt under the chocolate drizzle. besides, i'm convinced the people that like limp, undercooked bacon are the ones who haven't had it cooked correctly (i.e. nice and crispy).

the key to nice, crisp bacon is baking it. preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. take a cookie sheet, line it with aluminum foil. lay the bacon out next to each other, just barely touching.

bake it for 25-30 minutes making sure to check it frequently and rotate the pan halfway through. every oven is different and every package of bacon is different. so check it early and check it often. when done, the bacon with be dark brown without any translucence. transfer to a paper towel lined plate to catch the extra fat. when it has slightly cooled, the bacon should stand straight out when you hold it up like so:

if it is limpy like this:

it's not finished. put it back in for 5 more minutes!

once you remove the bacon from the oven, start melting the dark chocolate chips in a double boiler. once the chocolate has melted, the bacon will be cool enough to drizzle. drizzle the melted dark chocolate and let cool to harden the chocolate (if you can wait that long).

i know in my heart a plate of dark chocolate drizzled bacon with be waiting for me at the gates of heaven.