Uber-Cheesy Broccoli and Bacon Pasta Bake

I know that with a title like that, there is little need to elaborate. It's a very simple equation: cheese + pasta + bacon = awesome. As stated previously, broccoli is a super-hero vegetable, but it also happens to be really delicious, especially with pasta (remember these? they were the bomb!). And who will turn down a plate of lovely pasta baked to cheesy, golden perfection?

Not this gal. And well, bacon is just a bonus. It IS Easter weekend, after all... Lent is definitely over!!

For a successful baked pasta dish, always remember to keep a very close eye on your pasta: as they will cook in the sauce, you have to leave them slightly undercooked before you mix them with the sauce and finish them in the oven, otherwise you will get a gooey mess of overcooked mush. Check you pasta as they boil they must still have a some crunch when you drain them! Small pasta cook faster than big or stringy pasta, so pay attention as you get them ready.

I don't buy bacon very often (we rarely eat it, and it ends up sitting in the freezer for ages before I get around to defrosting it and using it) but when I do, I get President's Choice Old Fashioned thick-sliced bacon. I justify this purchasing of extremely fat pig-bottom by telling myself that since we have some every 3 months or so, I am making up for lost bacon-free time by ingesting all the calories at once... Challenge that flawless reasoning!

This dish is definitely an indulgence. The equation I mentioned above might lead to awesome, but awesome often seems to rhyme with carbs and fat OD for some reason... Save it for dinner after an especially lousy work day, or a hockey night where you have a feeling the bloody Bruins are gonna win and you just know in your bones comfort-food is a necessity... All that cheese, bacon and pasta will knock you right out into an oblivious food-coma of bliss. Trust me.

2 cups small dry pasta (shell, ziti or macaroni are all wonderful options)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 slices of bacon
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf Italian parsley, minced
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups milk
2 cup fresh broccoli, florets and stem chopped small
340g mozzarella, grated
1 tablespoon bread crumbs

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Bring a large pot of salted water on to boil. Add pasta and cook until almost al dente. Drain and set aside. While the pasta is cooking, cook the bacon in a pan over medium heat until crispy.

Transfer to a plate lined with kitchen towels to absorb the excess grease. Chop the bacon into small pieces and set aside.

Leave about 1 tablespoon of bacon fat in the pan and discard the rest. Cook the onions, garlic and parsley until just translucent.

Add the flour and stir until it has coated the mixture.

Gradually add in milk and continue cooking, stirring until mixture has thickened (if it is not thickening, you can add 1 scant tablespoon of flour, but don't dump it: lightly sprinkle it in the pan). Add the broccoli and cook for 2-3 minutes just to soften the florets. Season to taste with a pinch of sea salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper.

Add 1 cup of the mozzarella, the bacon and the cooked pasta to pan. Toss to combine, making sure everything is well coated.

Pour the mixture into a greased ovenproof dish.

Sprinkle the bread crumbs and the rest of the cheese on top and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the mixture is bubbly and the bread crumbs are golden.

Turn on the broiler for a minute of 2 before serving, to get a nice crisp on top.

If you want more veggies in there, you can halve the broccoli and add finely chopped cauliflower, carrot, zucchini and/or mushroom to you pan along with the broccoli, and throw them in the oven with your pasta. You might feel less guilty about stuffing your face will all this cheese...

This dish is indecently cheesy, and unlike chick-flicks and pop music, this is the awesome kind of cheesy!! The bacon's smoky flavor compliments the crunchy greenness of the broccoli very well. If you like it spicy, I would suggest adding a teaspoon of chili flakes along with the onion and garlic, but a few crunches of the pepper mill is really all you need to brighten up a bowl of these lovely pasta. You could also try mixing up the cheese by replacing 1/2 cup of the mozzarella you add to the sauce with the same quantity of any of your other favorite cheeses. I am sure Romano, Emental or Gruyere would seriously rock this pasta bake to a stellar level.

Technically, I was supposed to get 4 helpings, but those would be helpings for reasonable people with self-control... If you are making this for company, I strongly suggest doubling the recipe and getting very generous with the mozzarella...

As a side note, how annoying is it when your camera-phone takes nicer pictures than your camera-camera... Sigh!

Bacon Cupcakes?! Oh yeah, baby!

Cupcakes are my péché mignon. That expression was really made for cupcakes, as it translates literally into "cute sin", though it is the French way of saying guilty pleasures. But I never feel guilty about eating cupcakes, so I'll stick to the literal translation on this one! I am actually surprised that I haven't posted a cupcake recipe here before, but since I started this blog, I had precious little occasion to bake some. As the Holidays are approaching (and as people around me have cupcake-worthy things in their lives - like new babies, going away parties, etc.) I am on a cuppy-cake baking spree for the month of December!

This is really good news to me because cupcakes are my all-time favorite thing to bake. They are just so damn cute, delicious and irresistibly comforting. And with a little creativity, you can make a unique cupcake for every occasion imaginable… I first started baking them one sad, lonely evening when I had a massive craving for something sweet. Now I own a ton of cupcake cookbooks, I follow 3 or 4 different cupcake-blogs and I collect pastry-bag tips, liners, obscure ingredients and extracts, and I have a massive stack of cupcake recipes with a "to try!" label on them. (Psst! I am so cupcake-obsessed that I own cupcake-jewelry and I have a bad-ass cupcake tattooed on the nape of my neck…)

But let me tell you why I decided to bake this very unlikely cupcake recipe.

I think we all have a bacon-crazy friend. Mine is named Sam, and though he likes all kinds of food, bacon has a special place in his heart (his birthday party theme was Epic Meal Time; this is how insane this bacon fixation is). And Sam was in need of a little cheering up. So what is a devoted friend to do for a bacon fanatic with the blues? Why, bake him some bacon cupcakes, obviously!! When I saw this recipe on Chockylit's cupcake blog, I knew I had just the thing to make Sam very happy, if only as long as he was eating the cupcakes. And I had no doubt he would eat them.

I invited Sam over, dubbed him my sous-chef and lent him an apron. The rest is history, or rather, the strange result you have when you get two crazies in a kitchen with baking supplies and booze. Oh, come on! A baking lesson wouldn't have been half the fun without beer!

It may seem weird to some to mix super-sweet stuff like chocolate-covered toffees and maple syrup with bacon, but they go surprisingly well together. In Québec, when we go to the sugar shack in the spring, we douse all kinds of breakfast meats in maple syrup and it's awesome!!

I really had no idea what these would taste like, and to tell you the truth, I was a bit apprehensive... but holy cow were they delicious! The cake was obviously very rich and chocolatey and the icing had a great sweet cheesiness and creamy texture. The bacon flavor in the cake was unusual, but freakishly addictive. One of my lovely friends who had first declined to try them ended up asking for an extra one she could take home!

I guess Sam was right and that the awesome-level of everything is heightened exponentially when you add bacon!

Here is the recipe, altered slightly from the original featured on Cupcake Bakeshop by Chockylit. I got 16 cupcakes from it and a huge amount of icing.

Toffee, chocolate and bacon cupcakes:

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

1 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
3/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
3-1/2 slices cooked bacon, cut into chunks
1/3 cup chopped chocolate covered toffee (I used whole Mini Rolos)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and line a muffin pan with cupcake liners. Beat butter until softened. Add sugar and beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add egg and beat until well combined. Measure the flour, baking powder, baking soda and cocoa powder into a small sized bowl and whisk to combine. Measure out the milk and vanilla and stir to combine. Add about a third of the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar and beat to combine. Add about a half of the milk/vanilla and beat to combine. Continue adding, alternating between dry and wet and finishing with the dry. Gently fold in the bacon and toffee chunks. Scoop batter into cupcake cups about 1/2-2/3’s full. Bake cupcakes for about 22-25 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. Frost with the icing and garnish with a small chuck of bacon or a chocolate covered toffee.

Maple cream cheese frosting:

2 packages cream cheese
1/2 cup butter
4 cups sifted confectioners sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup

Bring butter to room temperature by letting it sit out for 1 or 2 hours. Sift powdered sugar into a bowl or onto parchment. Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed until creamy. Add 3 cups of the powdered sugar and half of the maple syrup. Beat until combined. Add more maple syrup and confectioners sugar until desired flavor, consistency, and sweetness. Refrigerate for 20 to 30 minutes before frosting.

This makes enough frosting for 24 to 30 cupcakes, so it can easily be halved, or saved in the fridge for a few days until you bake another batch of cupcakes to pipe it on.

I used a disposable plastic pastry bag, because I just wanted to pipe on a generous blob of icing and it worked like a charm. I topped the little guys with a Mini Rolo and they looked so cute!

Obviously, no substituting the real bacon for bacon bits! No, no, no! Use the real deal, being careful not to let it get too crispy when you cook it, because getting regularly-shaped chunks is impossible if the bacon slices are cooked too stiff. But you definitely want the smokey flavor in there, so I suggest using thickly sliced, old-fashioned bacon. President's Choice makes my favorite, but use any brand you like.

And while bacon cupcakes may not be the cure to the blues, they do make people really happy as they stuff their faces!