Piggy Pops! How to Make Bacon Lollipops & Amaze Your Friends

This, my friends, is what the devil uses to tempt vegans:

I saw a recipe for bacon lollipops online, but they involved frying the bacon in a pan and then pouring on maple syrup and I wanted something a little different. You start out with slab bacon. That's one big chunk of unsliced bacon. It has a tough bit of pig skin on the back that you will want to remove. It's easy though, it pulls right off and gives the dogs something to play with. Dice it up into big evenly-sized chunks. As you can see, I failed miserably at the evenly-sized part.

I will typically glaze bacon that I bake in the oven with a mixture of brown sugar, cayenne pepper & black pepper. But my husband Tim suggested I borrow a trick from our Coca Cola ham & use Coke. It has to be real Coke, no diet. It can however be Cherry Coke if that floats your boat. Let's stop a moment a preheat our oven to 425 degrees.

Ask ourselves why we aren't more careful about fingerprints on our black appliances and then line a large baking sheet with foil and place a rack (like the kind you use for cooling cookies) in it.

Okay, we're ready. Now to the glaze. Pour one can of Coke into a heavy bottomed sauce pan.

Now, let's add about half a cup of brown sugar

Some cayenne pepper. Judge the amount on your heat level preferences. And also a healthy dose of black pepper

Now bring to a boil and cook, stirring occasionally, until half of the liquid is gone and the mixture is syrupy.

Let the syrup cool for about five minutes, then add the bacon in and coat with the syrup

Now place bacon on the rack in the baking sheet. Try spacing them evenly. This is an example of how not to do that.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes at 425.   Just a note about the glaze. If you don't want to fuss with it, you can coat them in a mixture of brown sugar, cayenne & black pepper and they will be delicious. But the coating won't be quite as lollipop crunchy.

This is the finished product. Now add colorful toothpicks to make them Lollipops

Lolly, lolly, lolly.... get your bacon pop here....