Maple Bacon Sugar Cookies ~Kicking Kids Cancer's Butt One Cookie At A Time! ~

It's here again! The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap. Hundreds of us food bloggers participated last year and now again this year. But for a good cause! All the money raised in our cookie swap was donated to Cookies for Kids Cancer. OXO matching all of our donations.

I can't even begin to understand the amount of work it takes to organize a cookie swap this large with people spread out all over the country. Lindsay and Julie, my hat goes off to you both. You've done a fabulous job. Celebrate when this is all over and done with!

I shipped one dozen cookies to each of the my matches spread our all over the country. WA, IN and AZ. I sure hope they received them in one piece! This year I sent my three matches a chewy Maple Bacon Sugar Cookie. This is a cookie recipe  I adapted from my Slice and Bake Maple Sugar Cookies, that I made last year. This recipe is SO easy. You can roll the cookies into balls and flatten them like I did this time. You can shape them into a log and slice them off as you want them.... or you can roll them out and make a fun sugar cookie for the holidays. Being that I put bacon in them this time around I was leery of doing a slice and bake just because I feared the bacon would get in the way of my slices and make them look sloppy. So I opted to roll them into 1 inch balls and flatten them with the palm of my hand. You could also do this with a fork much like the classic peanut butter cookie.

So far I have gotten 2/3 of my cookies from the lovely ladies that had me as their match. A huge thanks to Kelly her cookies hit the spot with peppermint and chocolate. WIN! Problem though... Sydney ate almost all of them. Stupid mutt.... Then Tara from Chip Chip Hooray sent me her super delicious Chocolate Butterscotch Cookies. Those were a huge hit with my kids, they had never had butterscotch apparently and went kinda nuts for them. I know they are totally deprived right? I guess I need to do some butterscotch baking in the future!

Before we get the Maple Bacon Sugar Cookie recipe, I have a small confession. My husband came home... "ooo something smells good!" He then grabs a cookies and eats it. I look at him with a sly look on my face not saying a word..... "AHH you are a terrible person! There is bacon in these! That's like giving an alcoholic a beer and telling him it's soda!" Apparently he didn't find me trying to squeeze bacon into his day as funny as I did. Damn his vegetarian diet!

Maple Bacon Sugar Cookies
(Recipe adapted from my Slice and Bake Maple Sugar Cookies, which was adapted from Martha Stewart)

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for surface
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup of room temperature butter
1/2 cup  sugar
1/2 cup light-brown sugar
1 large egg yolk
3/4 cup maple syrup (the real stuff peoples!)
1 cup cooked crispy bacon, crumbled into tiny pieces

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350.

 In your electric mixer cream butter and sugars together on medium speed.

Add in egg yolk, syrup and bacon.

Sift together your flour and salt add into mixer while it is mixing on medium/low speed 1/2 a cup at a time.

After dough comes together, shape into 2 disks and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 1 hour.

Roll cookie dough into 1 inch balls and place on parchment paper lined cookie sheets. Flatted each ball with the palm of your hand. Bake for about 10 minute or until the edges start to get golden. For a crispier cookie bake longer. Chewy requires less cooking time. Remove cookies and transfer to a cooking rack.


NOW in addition to the The Food Blogger Cookie Swap I am also participating in Cookie Week with a group of my best blogging buds! Glad is donating $1 for each cookie swapped to  Cookies for Kids Cancer! Way to kick some cancer butt one cookie at a time!