Bacon ADVENTURE

Hello there!  Happy Science Day!  What's that? You didn't know today was Science Day?  That's because EVERY day is Science Day!!! YAY! So my friend Charles bought me this awesome book titled, The Book of Totally Irresponsible SCIENCE: 64 Daring Experiments for Young Scientists (1).

Fig 1.  This is the book yo. Respect!

http://amzn.com/076115020X

PS- If you do anything I blog about then you do so at your own risk, please wear the appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE), and don't come crying to me if you burn off your eyebrows!

Bacon Smokescreen (1)

Introduction:

As you may or may not realize I am apparently one of the few human beings that dislikes the taste of bacon.  I find it repellent, so of course it is the first thing I decide to do an experiment on, because SCIENCE! This involves making a tube-like bacony structure (aka "candle") and then seeing what happens when we light it on fire... HURRAH!

Abstract:

I do things, things happen, SCIENCE!

Materials:

Fig 2.  The stuff to make bacon candles!

1) Package of (shudder) bacon

2) Frying pan (if you're fancy)

3) Aluminum foil, the book says to use a 8inx6in piece, but that seems a little draconian so take a piece and make it work! Personally I want my candle to look like a skull, you're not the boss of me book!!

4) String (or if your like me and can't find string anywhere in the store then buy a candle and cut out the wick!)

5) Matches (or a lighter if you're high falootin)

Methods:

1)  Cook bacon, save grease, toss bacon.  Just kidding, I'm totally earthy, feed it to some street urchins or something (supplemental information).

Figure 3.  Bacon, don't worry I kept a bucket next to me in case I hurled.

2)  Make a shape out of the aluminum foil, don't get too excited and make it huge because you need to restrict the oxygen flow a bit.  If you make about 1lb of bacon you'll have enough grease for two candles (or bacon flavored lotion which would probably make you break out!) Seal one end of your aluminum grease fortress.

3)  Cut some string an inch longer than your case

4)  Pour bacon grease into whatever mold you chose (I hope you sealed
it well!), you might want to "slow your roll" and let the grease cool a little, or you can be one of the cool kids like me and immediately burn yourself on the aluminum foil (I forgot it was a conductor of heat!).

Figure 4.  A) I obviously did not seal my end well and that grease is hot!  Thank goodness I had it in the mold! B) This represents my feelings toward bacon pretty well.
A)                                                                                                                                              B)

when grease is set but still a little goopy put the string in it, but leave out some it's your wick (or you can cheat like me and put it in the liquid, just make sure to tape it down!)!

Figure 5.  When in doubt adapt! Darwinianism is so hot right now!

5) Leave it alone and do something productive like go outside and play, eat the leftover bacon, or read a novel or something. Place on a non-flammable base.

Figure 6.  Wait until grease hardens and you get a glimpse of what your arteries probably look like if you eat too much bacon.

6)  Light it on FIRE!!!  (for science!) 

Results and Discussion:


Well that was fun and now my house smells like fetid animal, oh wait I mean bacon!  Sadly my first try resulted in just a normal candle, this is because I am too much of a maverick and gave it too much air by putting it in the skull mold.

Figure 7.  Amateur sketch of me after the experiment didn't work.  Those are tears in case you couldn''t tell!

So I switched things up and actually followed directions making a metal cylindrical tube (thanks for ruining my creativity science!).  The following video is the result, music added for dramatic effect (pay special attention to the smoke coming out the top): 

The book says the black smoke from the resulting candle is similar to a car with a bad air/fuel ratio and the smoke is very dark due to the high level of impurities and high levels of fuel (the grease) combined with low levels of oxygen so it doesn't burn very purely.  However I think we can all agree that it is because any grease produced from the cooking of a hellbeast (aka bacon) will produce a foul black cloud as from the pit it originates from.  To sum up I don't like bacon, but if you light the hardened grease on fire you can make an effective smokescreen (handy if you're a ninja) or smoke signal (handy if you live in a tepee).  Now...what to do with all this disgusting bacon...

Figure 8.  Oh the BACONANITY!

Supplemental Information:

Well what I decided to do with my excess bacon was to make cookies to serve to my friends!

Oatmeal Bacon Breakfast Cookies (2)

Ingredients:

                                                                                 Figure S1.  This is what you need to make these cookies so go get it!

1lb Bacon

1 cup butter, "softened"

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar, packed

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour 

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 tsp ground cinnamon

3 cups quick cooking oats

For Glaze:

1 3/4 cup confectioners' sugar (powdered sugar for those of you not in the know)

3 Tblspn Water, or as needed

3 Tblspn Real Maple Syrup

Procedure:

1.  Take cooked bacon, pat with paper towel, and chop it.

Figure S2.  I'm fancy/need to do dishes and used a pizza cutter

2.  Beat butter, white sugar, and brown sugar in a mixer until fluffy.

Figure S3. The "wet" ingredients, you may be fooled by the optical illusion of my butter being melted and not just softened, but you probably need to get your eyes checked, or I shouldn't get distracted by the television when things are in the microwave.  

3.  Add eggs and vanilla extract, mix until thoroughly combined.

Figure S4.  Oh ya!  Blend it...it's your birthday!

4.    Whisk flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a separate bowl.  Mix that mixture into the previous mixture you mixed before (Phew! That's a lot of mixing!)

5.  Stir in your oats and bacon about 1/3 cup at a time, cover dough and refrigerate for about an hour.

Figure S5.  Yay!  Dough is done! Mission accomplished! Pat yourself on the back.

6.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F, grease baking sheets (or cheat and use greased wax paper).  Scoop out about 1/3 cup dough and roll into a ball, plop it down on the sheet and then flatten it slightly with a fork dipped in water.

Figure S6.  I struggled with how much to flatten them, but I think this worked pretty well.

7.  Bake for about 10-12 minutes until golden brown with browned edges.  Allow to cool for 3-5 minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a wire rack.  

Figure S7.  Ya I already glazed them, what you wanna do? Fight about it!?

8.  For glaze whisk powdered sugar, water, and maple syrup together in a bowl until smooth.  Let it stand about 5 minutes to slightly thicken.  Drizzle onto the tops of the cooks and allow to stand about 20 minutes until storing.

Figure S8.  This glaze looks like...no comment!

Result:

Well the cookie was pretty good, of course all I could taste was bacon which I am not a big fan of, so I'm probably not the best judge.  I brought them to game night and 3/4 of my friends loved them! (He being of sane mind and body realizing that bacon is the devil!). Oddly, my friends christened me with an "I love bacon" magnet because people love to taunt baconphobes!  For next time I would figure out something about that glaze, it tasted very strongly of powdered sugar, which was not ideal.    I would give it 8 out of 11.25 strips of bacon!

References:

1) Connolly, Sean.  The Book of Totally Irresponsible SCIENCE: 64 Daring Experiments for Young Scientists. New York: Workman Publishing, 2008.  Print.
2) Bacon Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies with Maple Glaze Recipe.  Allrecipes.  n.p. Web.  n.d.