Dear Cakehead,

What cake would taste best garnished with bacon?

Love,
Mira

Dear Mira,

Pairing salty and sweet edibles is one of our favorite activities. To tackle this particular challenge was a special delight since we can think of little that we like to eat more than bacon and cake.

Salivating, we hit our test kitchen. We were pretty certain that chocolate cake would overpower the bacon, but afraid we might miss out on a surprising combination, we decided to give the flavor a chance. Sadly, we were correct. We want the salty fat rind of the bacon to cut through the sweetness. But instead the chocolate flavor was focus.

We whipped up a batch of old fashion yellow cake. Sprinkled with bacon, the cake didn’t overpower, but was too sweet and left us very thirsty.

Carrot cake was too busy with the bacon. So finally, we tried a red velvet cake recipe (if you use this recipe replace the pecans with crumbled bacon). Not only was the combination absolute perfection, but we like how the red of the cake references the red of the bacon meat and the cream cheese frosting punctuates the crunchy fat of the bacon. We whipped up a big batch of itty-bitty cupcakes and called them bacon bitty cakes.

Give it a try and let us know what you think.

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