Test #157: Bacon and RICE KRISPIE TREAT

The subject

I'd wager that most young chefs start their long cooking life with Rice Krispie Treats. Recipes don't get much simpler--the famously noisy cereal, butter, and marshmallows are all it calls for, yet the sense of accomplishment a kid gets from whipping a batch of these sticky bricks up is pretty palpable. More of a few of us can remember making them in our college cafeterias via the school microwaves (which perturbed the dishwashing staff to no end--that shiznit just does NOT come off). If the three-ingredient recipe is too much for you, there are now prepackaged Treats--which is what we used here.

The result
Never underestimate bacon's amazing power to transform the foods it touches. We bit into the bacon-baked Rice Krispie Treat fully expecting to find the same crunchy-chewy texture of the original, with the added bonus of a little bacon flavor. Instead, the treat was completely transmogrified into a smooth, sweet, bacony nugget--no crunch, just flavor and a little chewiness. We struggled to find something to compare it to, and the best we could come up with was bacon-wrapped taffy. Something like that. Well, whatever it was, it was damned delicious.

The conclusion: Bacon + Rice Krispie Treat = magical taste

Next up: Bacon + whole-wheat bread