Sweet treats abound this time of the year, but when you don’t eat wheat, you can begin to feel like someone forgot to give you a ticket to the indulgence train.

I felt that this was a situation that had to be rectified, so I gathered my baking tools and got to work.

That statement makes it sound like the recipe I’m about to share is complicated, but it’s not. In fact, it’s quick, it’s tasty — as always — is guaranteed to get your hands covered in delicious dough, and will cause people’s eyebrows to rise when you hand them out. They’re peanut butter bacon cookies. Now, I’ve made these cookies before. The recipe made the internet rounds a few years ago when bacon was trendy. The original method doesn’t really need any improvement, but I just can’t leave well enough alone, so I tweaked it a bit for this blog post. I recommend trying out both recipes, the Shutter Bean technique, which is scrumptious, and the I’m-going-to-go-nuts-and-add-even-more-stuff version I shall unveil below.

These are definitely a treat of a cookie. They are not for everyday consumption, but oh, when that special day comes around, won’t it be glorious!

Coconut Peanut Butter Bacon Cookies with Chocolate Chips

16 oz crunchy coconut & peanut butter
2 cups coconut sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons baking soda
12 slices bacon
6 oz chocolate chips
coarse sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Cook the bacon, six pieces at a time, in the microwave. (This makes the recipe super-quick.) Spread two paper towels on a microwave-safe plate, lay out the pieces, making sure none overlap, place two more paper towels on top, and microwave on high for five minutes. Repeat with other six pieces, let cool, and chop into small pieces.
Add peanut butter and sugar and mix with your hands until integrated. Add eggs and soda and again mix with your hands until everything is a big, doughy bit of gloriousness.
Toss in bacon and chocolate and mix some more. Try to get most of the dough off your fingers, but cleaning off the rest is up to you.
After washing your hands -ahem!- form dough into balls the size of black walnuts. Roll dough in a bit of coconut sugar if you’d like.
On a greased cookie sheet (I just rubbed the bacon paper towels on the sheet), place the cookies about two inches apart. Press down on the ball with a fork to make a criss-cross pattern. Sprinkle the top of each cookie with a pinch of sea salt. (This is something I learned the hard way, as my recipe alteration messed with the savory/sweet ratio, swinging too far into the sweet category. By adding a teensy bit of coarse salt to the top of each cookie, it helped bring the savoriness of the bacon back into play.)
Bake for 12 minutes, using your nose to help tell when the cookies are done. Here’s the trick — if you pay attention, you can smell when the cookie goes from cooking to caramelization. The minute the cookie begins to smell a little “brown,” you know it’s ready to be removed from the oven.
Let cool on the cookie sheet for five minutes, then move cookies to a cooling rack for a few more minutes. Maybe, just maybe, try one while they’re still gooey and warm…

Makes around two dozen cookies — depending on how many you consume along the way.