Picnic at Ravenna Park!

Today, a few friends and I had a picnic at Ravenna Park. The theme was indulgence. Although some of my friends interpretated it in a much healthier manner, I decided to make Bacon Bow-Ties.

Although I had these once or twice when I was a little girl, I haven't eaten them since. But they're incredibly easy to make. Lay out any kind of buttery cracker, sprinkle on some parmesan cheese, and wrap with half a slice of regular bacon. It will look like this:

It looks absolutely delicious, right? All of that cold, streaky bacon . . . Bake it at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour and forty-five minutes, and then bring it to your picnic. The setup will look like this:

And your dish will be the most unhealthy by far. To tell the truth, even though everyone loved the bow-ties and gobbled them down, I don't think I can ever bring myself to make them again. I love unhealthy food, but even I have my limits. And making something that has bacon fat dripping and absorbing into already fattening and unhealthy crackers and cheese . . . oh my goodness.

My friends and I did have fun swapping unhealthy bacon stories, though. One friend's mother likes to make Little Smokies sausages wrapped in bacon, with brown sugar on top. While baking, the brown sugar melts into the bacon fat, creating a sweet and savory glaze. Another friend's mother makes pig candy: bacon is tied into knot, brown sugar is sprinkled on top, and then the whole thing is baked.

I am still waiting to try a bacon cheeseburger with Krispy Kreme doughnuts as the buns.

If anyone out there is brave enough to try Bacon Bow-ties, here is the recipe:

Bacon Bow-Ties

For the parmesan cheese, I used the stuff out of a can. You can use the real deal if you would like, but I just don't think that it fits in. I got thirty crackers out of the materials below, but my wire rack only fit twenty at a time.

1 lb. regular-sliced bacon
1 sleeve of Club Crackers or a similar buttery cracker
Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Take the crackers and put around 1 tb. of parmesan cheese on top of each one. Wrap each with half a slice of bacon. I like to leave the ends a little uncovered because the cracker gets extra crisp on the ends and it makes a better bow-tie shape.

Set them on a wire rack on top of a pan lined with tinfoil (to make clean up easier) so that the bacon fat can escape and not make the crackers soggy, and put them in the oven for around an hour and forty-five minutes.

Let cool for five minutes, and enjoy! These can be served at room temperature. They also freeze really well. Just bake, let them cool, and put them in the freezer. A little before the time you want to serve them, pop them in a 400 degree oven for ten minutes.

Peach Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Frosting. And grapefruit on the side.

Peaches are one of my favorite fruits. When it's late summer, and the peaches are fragrant, sweet, and so smooth that you can eat them with a spoon (like ice-cream) - well, that is when I am in heaven. All year long, I long for peach season. So when I first see peaches in the supermarket, I get really excited and forget that it's early in the season and the chances that the peaches will be smooth and soft and sweetly juicy are low.

Peaches were on sale at Trader Joe's, a pound for $4.99. I bought a whole box excitedly, forgetting that I am only one person and the chances that I can finish the box are low. Those chances were made lower when I tried a few and found that they were all very hard and worse - quite sour. So they languished in my room until I felt guilty and decided that I needed to do something with them before they went bad. Luckily, I had Smitten Kitchen's recipe for Peach Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Frosting bookmarked.

I made them in a flash and you know what? These might be the best cupcakes I've ever made. They're soft, moist from the peaches, and with juicy bits of peach studded throughout. The brown sugar is noticeable in the frosting in a good way, making cream cheese frosting (which I already love) even more spectacular. I may never make a plain cream cheese frosting again. This cupcake tastes like summer to me.

That being said, there are still a few changes I would make to the recipe. I used four large peaches rather than three because I adore peach flavor and wanted to use my peaches up, and I found that I liked this change. It was more peach without being overwhelming. I also used all purpose flour instead of cake flour because the local Safeway didn't carry it. The cupcakes were light and fluffy without it, so don't sweat it if you don't use that. I used cinnamon instead of nutmeg because I didn't have nutmeg on hand.

And last of all, although the frosting was delicious, there was a very faint sort of chalky texture, which I think comes from the cornstarch. My frosting was pretty stiff after sitting in the refrigerator for an hour, and so I think that next time, I will decrease the cornstarch by half and just let the frosting sit in the fridge a little longer.

I had a cupcake for breakfast today. The grapefruit makes it healthy, right??