These are a few of my favorite things..

..forget about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, we're talking bacon and chocolate here. Those are two of my favorite things, the former one of the major reasons I could never be a vegetarian, and the latter, well, because it's chocolate!

Combining your favorite things can be a bit iffy though. I love my comfy sweatpants, and I love me some sky-high heels, but rest assured that you will never have to witness me wearing both together. I love backpacking, and I love the electric heated blanket on my bed at home. My husband tells me that I simply have to accept that we cannot take the latter with us, when doing the former. However, chocolate and bacon, whilst they may not immediately seem like a marriage made in heaven, do go beautifully together, and the recipe below is the proof.

I found this recipe online on Allrecipes.com, and, and refusing to be swayed by my kids' cries of 'Ugh, that's GROSS!' was determined to give it a go. After they have gobbled down several of the delicious results of my culinary intransigence, they will be forced to eat their words.

Bear in mind that this recipe makes a LOT of cupcakes - with one quantity of the recipe below, I made 48 minis and 12 standard sized cupcakes! You may want to halve things!

Dark Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes
(for quantities see above)

12 slices of bacon (I used ready-cooked bacon)
2 cups AP flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups white sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
2 eggs
1 cup strong, brewed coffee, cold
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup canola oil
Prepared chocolate frosting

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. If using ready-cooked bacon, chop finely. If using raw bacon, cook in a skillet until browned and crisp, then crumble.
3. In a large bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the center and pour in oil, buttermilk, coffee and eggs. Stir until just blended (the mixture will be runnier than a classic muffin batter).
4. Mix in 3/4 of the bacon, setting the remainder aside for decoration.
5. Spoon batter into cups of a muffin tin, lined with paper cases.
6. Bake in oven until tops spring back when lightly touched (around 20 minutes for standard muffins, 15 for mini muffins).
7. Cool on a wire rack. When cool, decorate with frosting and a sprinkle of crumbled bacon.