Road Test: Bacon Pancakes

If you've spent much time on Pinterest, it's likely you've stumbled across this photo. And drooled.

Yes, those are pieces of bacon cooked inside pancake batter. Swoon. I remember the first time I saw them I thought, "this has to be good." I mean, come on... bacon=awesome. pancakes=delish. In the words of Alan Jackson, "too much of a good thing is a good thing." So, last night when we were hard-pressed to find something good for dinner, we decided to give this fantastic idea a try. 

We started by cooking up some bacon to just less than perfectly done. 

And then let the excess grease be absorbed on paper towels-- the way you would normally do it.

At this point, the griddle was just covered in grease. And since I didn't want all that grease inside the pancakes, I gave the griddle a quick wipe down.

Then came the fun part: the pancake batter. If you take a look at the picture below, you'll notice how squiggly mine turned out... which makes me think the original photo is probably not a real photograph. Unless you have a bacon press to make them cook in a straight line, chances are your bacon pancakes are going to look a little less than beautiful. But it all tastes the same, right?

All of this seemed well and good until it came time to flip the pancakes. Which fell apart.

The pancake batter was too thick to get around the underside of the bacon, so it basically just cooked onto it without adhering in any way. It would break around the edges of the bacon, and you could pretty much peel the bacon right out of the center. So next time I poured down a little bit of batter before layering on the bacon.

And then poured another thin layer of batter over the top.

They cooked up much better this time. Still not pretty, but functional.

The verdict: actually not that delicious. There was nothing wrong with them, but I just prefer my bacon separate from my pancakes. I think mixing them together took away from the saltiness of the pork and just muddled the flavors a little too much for my liking.

... So why take you all the way through a lengthy post to tell you it wasn't that tasty? Well I figure it's best to share successes along with failures. And hey, maybe you'd want to try them for yourselves-- bacon pancakes might just be your new favorite thing. Give it a shot! And tell me what you think.