Giant Maple Bacon Pancake with Cinnamon Bacon

As I mentioned last post, I am moving in a couple weeks. Pursuant to this, I have been groggily stumbling through the moving process for the past couple of days. I have been somewhat pleased at the fact that several long forgotten/lost items have come to the surface during my rummaging. One thing found is a package of Maple Bacon Pancakes from BaconFreak.com that I won from a contest on Reddit.



I also had some cinnamon bacon from Altamont Orchards. By the way, if you haven't been to Altamont Orchards yet this fall, time is waning. Click the link and maybe my post will inspire you to make a trip.



I decided to sample the maple bacon pancake mix and the cinnamon bacon at the same time by making a giant pancake with integral bacon. This is not an original idea, I got the notion from some Dutch Pannekoeken recipes that I was looking at.

I started by frying the bacon until fairly crisp and then distributing it about the pan. There was a delicious smell of cinnamon while this bacon was cooking, almost like cinnamon rolls. I was excited.



While this was going I made the batter. Very simple, just add some water and mix. The maple bacon had odd little chunks and bits in it. I assumed that this was maybe dehydrated bacon, so my curiosity took hold and I gobbled one up. It was actually a little chunk of maple flavored stuff. As much as I love real maple syrup, I am very much not a fan of fake-ish maple flavored gunk like that which you would find in the center of cheap Valentine's day maple cream chocolates.



I was hoping that the power of the bacon in the batter would over come the somewhat icky maple flavor. I dumped the mix into the pan with the bacon to form one giant, dinner plate sized pancake.



I let the bottom brown and then finished the cooking process under a medium hot broiler in the oven. We are left with a giant pancake, beautifully patterned with thick bacon strips.



I poured on some 100% maple syrup and tucked in. Now just look at the picture, you would be expecting excellence from something entiled "Giant Maple Bacon Pancake with Cinnamon Bacon," wouldn't you? I know I was and I was left slightly disappointed. There were several issues that I had with both the pancake mix and the cinnamon bacon.

First, the bacon. Not a huge fan. I expected this to be very high quality, it looked thick and meaty and delicious. But alas, there was a lot of fake smoky flavor and it was so salty as to be almost inedible. Second, the pancake mix. If they nixed the maple chunks this would be better, I just couldn't get behind the aggressive, fake maple flavors. I have maple syrup myself, just give me the bacon.

Anyways, all of this is not to sour you on the idea of a giant, bacon pannekoek. This is a worthy concept, get some good quality bacon and use a simple batter mix and you are golden. I think maybe there was just a little too much going on in mine. However, it was an amusing experiment.