FOR SCIENCE!

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*** NEW! Anderson Porcine Industries' Deluxe Choco-Porcine Culinary Kit, Mark I is for sale! ***

*** NEW! Someone has bacon-related data that's under a creative commons license! ***

Experiment time!

Perhaps spurred on by xkcd, Eliza and I began to talk about pig, chocolate, and deliciousness. A quick google reveals that we're not the first to conceive of such an idea, Vogel's chocolate actually makes some, and some guy experimented a bit. But the spirit of experimentation lay within us, and we could not deny its power. Also, Eliza is a genius: she brought that most explosive weapon in the culinary arsenal, Pop Rocks. Just as steel superceded iron, we are certain that bacon, chocolate, and Pop Rocks shall soon replace bacon and chocolate in both industry and the household. In these annals we shall present a process as well as clinical results.

This is so not our fault. Science agrees!

At the decreed time, we convened in the alchemist's lab (colloquially known as 'the boghouse kitchen') and assembled the calorie-laden raw materials that would be transformed into succulent culinary gold.

Step 1: gather components. 500g smoked bacon. 304g Callebaut milk chocolate, 282g Callebaut dark chocolate. 9.5g Tropical Punch Pop Rocks, 9.5g Wild Berry Pop Rocks (35% more!). 5.7g sprinkles. One helluva good idea.

Mouths watered, eyes gazed longingly, and hands were washed in a manner conveying hunger. We were read for step 2: prepare the bacon. We gingerly breached* the bacon containment system, then watched and waited, but it rapidly became evident that we would actually need to do something to spark the alchemical process; some form of application of energy to meet the activation energy needs of the reaction. (Note to chemists: your godless electron-worshipping graphs with activation energy humps and reaction energy results have no place in our bacon-fearing world. Conversion of tasty to golden deliciousness is a zero-order reaction, proceeding at the speed of hunger, that is beyond your simple mechanical tricks.)

The radioactive material in the smoke detector was immediately ruled out; the mighty power of pork would surely set the detector off, and we had serious concerns about initiating pop-rock fission chain reactions. We'd been told that matter is energy, so we put the bacon in a pan made of matter. But twice the power is twice as, er, powerful, so we cranked the oven and threw 'em on. Pink and... frothy? Must be extra-special bacon.

Makin' bacon: possibly the single most important thing I did that day.

Step 3: refine the process.Process engineering is important. Parallel bacon processing results in fewer bottlenecks and greater olfactory output. We deemed conveyor belts inappropriate, partly because we didn't have enough toilet paper tubes to really get a good line going.

The bacon is ready when it's crispy but not burnt - it must have enough cohesion; if it disintegrates into bacon bits, you'll end up with bacon-chocolate sprinkles, which makes the actual sprinkles unneccessary.

Placing a crucible over a cauldron filled with boiling water increases bubbling but reduces burning, toil and trouble.

Step 4: Stir mercilessly. The chocolate is ready when it has all given in, at which point it is easy to mold to your will.

Melted chocolate can cause tasty workplace accidents. Be sure to keep melted chocolate well seperated, or scrumptious but entropic mixing may occur.

Step 5: Insert bacon into chocolate. Cackle maniacally.

Step 6: Cover the bacon in chocolate. Allow to cool.

Of course, while it's cooling... more experimentation! Premade "pizza spinaci" seemed like such a good idea... but the pizza appeard to have once been pictured on the box, long long ago, long before the zombies came and ate the tomato sauce and passed the zombie disease on to the pizza itself.

And there's only one thing that could make pizza better.

Spinach pizza with milk chocolate. Verdicts:Eliza
Mmm... do you want to help me finish this?Dan
Ah, I guess I will if I need to.

Spinach pizza with dark chocolate. Verdicts:Eliza
This... isn't so good.Dan
It's ok, I guess. It tastes like chocolate mostly. Too rich.

Final conclusion: avoid mixing spinach pizza with chocolate in your mouth.

Delicious, dipped-once bacon. All that's missing is the second dipping and the crown popping jewels.

Step 7 and 8: dip a second time. Post-secondary-dip, apply Pop Rocks. Be careful, it's easy to get excited and overpour.

Step 9: allow the bars to cool while eating ice cream. A most critical step. Besides, due to the No Chocolate Left Behind law, there is no such thing as an acceptable chocolate loss. It must be vigorously applied to all foodstuffs. Our chocolates are our future, after all.

Ice cream conclusion: simple, tasty and cold.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of blue pop rocks, I shall fear no taste explosion.

Step 10: CONSUME!Eliza
Initially fruity, spicy tones followed by a rich chocolate body with a bold bacon finish.Dan
An interesting combination of creamy and candy. Intruiging subtle notes of light crystalline sugar highlight the mellow start and body, finishing with a smooth transition to porcine.

And in the other corner of the ring, the challenger, in pink rocks and dark chocolate... moooooooore baaaaaacon!

Dan
Hmm. Deep chocolate flavour with effervescent highlights. Very gentle hints of smoky meat and - dare I suggest? - a hint of musk. Fascinating crunchy texture.Eliza
Striking. A very complex blend of flavours: sweet berries with a breeze of smoke and salt. Decisively rounded. Held its chocolate better [than green pop rocks/milk chocolate].

Conclusion

"I'm drunk on bacon. Egads." - Eliza"The frontiers of culinary art must be pushed. Pop rocks, chocolate, and bacon make about as much sense to traditional chefs as impressionism did to romanticists. The pizza was gross, though." - Dan

NEW! More feedback!

"If you didn't tell me it had bacon, I wouldn't know it had bacon. Until later. Actually, now I'm, ah, kind of tasting the bacon. [pause] If I was stoned, I would love this. This is beautiful stoner food. It has a weird aftertaste though... [pause] ...did, did you just feed me chocolate-covered bacon?" - Rachael

Footnotes

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends," means "let’s charge into the gap in the enemy’s defenses," not "let’s reach into our pants again." - http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/breach.html

*** NEW! Anderson Porcine Industries' Deluxe Choco-Porcine Culinary Kit, Mark I is for sale! ***