Do-It-Yourself Bacon Bouquet
We all have at least one bacon fanatic in our lives. You know the person I'm talking about. He/she lives, breathes and speaks bacon, drinks bacon lattes and consumes all things covered, topped and/or flavored with bacon. My man is the bacon fanatic in my life; he is so much of a bacon lover, that he uses Bacon Ipsum for his design mockups at the ad agency we both work at instead of your typical lorem ipsum filler text.
When it was my one-year anniversary at the agency, he surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of roses in my favorite color. So, as his three years at the agency approached, I thought of a pretty stellar idea that would allow me to not only reciprocate his gesture, but also transform it in a more masculine, bacon-ified way.
Behold: the bacon bouquet. This is a pretty simple do-it-yourself project that will leave the bacon lover in your life feel like he/she is the luckiest person in the world, and will also leave you with some pretty valuable brownie points in the creativity and effort departments.
You'll need:
A package of thick-cut bacon
A bouquet or two of faux flowers, preferably with sturdy stems
Toothpicks
A nonstick cooling rack
A drip tray
Aluminum foil
A vase
Ribbon
Start off by preheating the oven to 400°. Then, wash your hands and begin rolling the bacon. You may want to keep a pair of scissors nearby to trim the bacon if its shape is off.
Take a toothpick and stick it through the bottom of the bacon "bud", as close to the edge as possible. This will help keep the bud intact during baking, and will also help keep it upright while it's in the oven.
Once you've completed the first two steps for all the bacon buds, arrange them evenly on a nonstick cooling rack placed over a drip tray wrapped in aluminum foil.
Prepare your bouquet by removing the faux flower buds from the stems, leaving the sepal, the cup-like part that nests the flower bud. Then place your bouquet(s) into your vase, packing around it with loose, crumpled newspaper to keep it snug and from tipping over due to the weight of the bacon.
Once the oven has been preheated, place the tray into the oven and leave for about 40 minutes, checking through the oven window occasionally.
After the bacon buds have finished baking, take the tray out of the oven to cool. The outside of the buds should be nice and crispy. The inside won't be as crispy, but will still be cooked.
After the bacon buds have been completely cooled, remove the toothpicks and gently place each bud into its spot in the bouquet. If the bouquet seems a bit loose, secure it by tying a ribbon around the stems.
And, voila--your beautiful and wonderfully-smelling bacon bouquet is complete! I paired the bouquet with a bottle of his favorite Basil Hayden’s kentucky bourbon whiskey and he absolutely loved it.