Here’s to @baconandbaileys Happy Blogiversary

One of the things that I enjoy about blogging is the sense of community that exists among bloggers and twitter friends.  The honest exchange of ideas, passions and talents has a great appeal.  I have really enjoyed the flood of ideas, creative inspiration and humor that comes across my twitter timelines and is amplified in the blogs of my online friends.

Kelly Neil,@baconandbaileys on twitter, and creator of http://www.kellyneil.com has contributed amazing photography and shared her passion for food and enjoyment of life with us for a year now.  In celebration of that I created a dessert in honor of her contributions.

Renee Lavallee, @FeistyChef on twitter, and author of a Tuesday column in the Arts & Life section of the Chronicle Herald shared her pizza dough recipe with us last Tuesday.    After reading the article honouring pizza and discovering a simple recipe that promised to deliver and amazing crust I just had to it it out.  Renee invited me to try using this dough with some local meats and cheese.  I did just that and the crust, as promised, was fantastic, I will blog the results in a day or so.  First I want to share the results of my @baconandbaileys and @FeistyChef inspired dessert.  The pizza dough recipe I used for the base is provided in the following Chronicle Herald column. http://thechronicleherald.ca/ArtsLife/1235545.html .  If you like this pizza dough recipe check out Renne’s blog http://feistychef.ca/ .

This Bacon and Baileys pizza has 3 components, the crust, the cheesecake inspired ‘sauce’ and the toppings.

Toppings:

3 Strips of thin sliced Smoked Bacon

2 Tbsp Maple Sugar

1 Cup of Water

1 Cup of Sugar

3/4 Cup of Whole Pecans

2 tbsp Milk Chocolate chips or wafers, very cold

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Place the bacon on a cooling rack over a foil lined cookie sheet Place in the oven for 5 minutes.  Remove from the oven and sprinkle half the sugar on the bacon.  Return to the oven until the sugar has melted.  Remove for the oven and flip the bacon.  Sprinkle the rest of the sugar on the bacon.  Cook until the sugar is melted and the bacon is cooked.  Watch it carefully bacon burns fast.

While the bacon is cooking combine the sugar and water in a sauce pot, attach a candy thermometer.  Bring the water to a boil over medium high heat, and heat until the temperature reaches 310 degrees and the color turns golden.  This will take a while but watch it carefully, once it gets to around 300 degrees the temperature will spike fast.  While the water is boiling spread a layer of nuts on a silicon mat on a cookie sheet.  When the syrup has reached temperature and color pour it evenly over the nuts.  Allow them to cool completely.  They will look cool before they are, be very careful, nothing you cook with can burn you like hot sugar.

Put half the brittle into a food processor and chop till it is the size of fine gravel.  Rough chop the candied bacon.

In a spice grinder or coffee grinder grind the cold chocolate chips into course sand

Baileys Pizza “Sauce”

Ingredients

1/4 cup of Ricotta Cheese (Prior Recipe)

2 Tbsp Quark or Creamed Cheese

1 Tbsp Baileys

2 tsp Vanilla

1 tsp Maple Sugar

1 Egg Yolk

Combine all of the ingredients except the yolk. Taste and adjust to your personal taste, the alcohol flavor will cook off.

Crust

I made the crust according to Renee’s directions, but halved the salt.  I preheated my oven to 525 degrees with the stone in the oven.  I rolled out the dough to 12 inches and very thin.  Then I put fork holes all over the skin to help reduce it puffing up.  I baked the skin for 4 minutes then removed it.

A couple tips for baking pizza.

• Make sure your pizza stone is hot when you put the skin on it.  It helps crisp the skin.
• Use a pizza peal to transfer the pizza to the stone and pick it up.  Put a bit of corn meal on the peal to allow the pizza to side easily

Assembly

Ingredients

1 tbsp melted butter

2 tsp maple sugar

Take the pizza skin and spread a thick layer of the Baileys pizza sauce on it.  Then sprinkle on the crushed candied brittle, chocolate, and chopped candied bacon.  Break the remaining candied pecans and lay them on the pizza.  Brush the edges of the pizza with melted butter and sprinkle with sugar.  Slide the skin back on the hot pizza stone and bake until the crust starts to brown and the topping is bubbly, about 5 minutes.  Allow the pizza to cool and serve with a shot of Baileys.

Thanks to my local providers:

Bacon : Sweet Williams Country Sausage

Maple Sugar: Neil R Ripply Maple

Milk and Quark : Fox Hill Cheese House