Thin mint bacon

listen, i can explain

Hey, clowns!

Today’s edition of the newsletter is actually inspired by a series of odd things Davida and I have stumbled upon at the grocery store recently, and they involve Big Brand Collaborations.

These crossover products are starting to get real weird. Remember that Doritos liquor I made a cocktail with a while back? Then there were those no-reason French’s mustard Skittles I taste-tested for my job a few years ago. Shit like that is making me wonder if these fools are taking notes straight from Food is Stupid. Is my psyche leaking discharge into the modern zeitgeist?

Also, fess up, dickholes, which one of you corporations owes me a boatload of money? Daddy needs new socks. I want some Fruit of the Loom, not that Hanes shit.

Anyway, we were out shopping for basics when Davida shouted “Hey!” and handed me something from one of the refrigerated cases.

It was a package of Hormel bacon that was rubbed with Cinnamon Toast Crunch seasoning. It was even branded with the cereal’s official logo and everything. I laughed, briefly blacked out, and put the bacon back on the shelf.

But later, when I got back home, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Were people asking for this? Did Hormel sit a bunch of consumers down to ask them what they dreamt about in a bacon product? Because the last time I checked, cinnamon sugar cereal-flavored bacon was not exactly something I had on my wishlist.

What’s interesting is that Cinnamon Toast Crunch already has its cinnamon seasoning, called Cinnadust, available in a shaker.

I am actually familiar with Cinnadust already. In fact, I’ve used it for this very newsletter. I made Cinnamon Toast bungholes with it some years back. See? I’ve put this Cinnamon Toast Crunch shit on pork products before, where’s my check?!

Also, the stuff is fine, I guess. Even though you’re supposed to use it for things like cinnamon toast and ice cream, I’ve primarily used it for things like sweet potatoes and butternut squash. What’s weird is you have to use kind of a lot of it for anything to actually taste good.

So a few days later, my curiosity finally got the better of me, and I went back to the store to get the Cinnamon Toast Crunch bacon. I mean, on paper, it sounded like it could be fine, because I figured it’d taste like candied bacon with cinnamon. Most of the emotional insult came from the silliness of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch part, but I guess I’m the idiot who went out and bought it, for nine stupid dollars.

But I couldn’t really experiment with it unless I taste tested it first.

Normally I pan-fry my bacon, but since I just wanted to cook it all in one fell swoop, I decided to do it in the oven. And right when I opened that package, that cinnamon smell hit me right in the face. It totally smelled like an actual bag of freshly opened Cinnamon Toast Crunch, along with smoky raw pork, which was kind of fucked up.

I put the bacon in the oven at 415 degrees (that seemed like a nice number), let it ride for 10 minutes, then I flipped it and let it cook for five minutes longer.

The apartment smelled bacony with a slight bit of holiday cheer in the background. Davida took a sniff and declared, “It smells like a cinnamon roll.”

I agreed, and said, “…but with meat.”

I knew our oven was a little inconsistent when it came to hot spots, so I guess I wasn’t entirely surprised when my finished product looked like a cross between partially cooked bacon and charcoal.

And this stuff did not taste at all like I was expecting it to.

That’s because it wasn’t very sweet. The curing made the bacon taste nearly sour, and the cinnamon flavor only started coming out in the aftertaste, and not in a good way. Ever smell those bags of cinnamon-scented pinecones at the grocery store during Christmas? Imagine that, but in bacon form.

I could not really find one redeeming thing about this stuff, but the ever sunny taste-tester Davida still declared she liked it, though she said she could see where I was coming from. I guess I have a lower tolerance for potpourri-flavored bacon than she does.

Man, they really fumbled the bag on this one. Like, they could have literally just covered a slab with Cinnadust and it would have been fine. But this stuff had a distinctly artificial flavor to it that genuinely made me angry.

So I thought to myself, “Dannis, as the greatest food writer in all of history, you could easily show these numbnuts who’s boss by creating a superior product. But what type of bacon crossover could you do that would blow Hormel’s Cinnamon Toast Crunch collab out of the water?”

I immediately thought of this other seasoning blend I saw at the grocery store last month involving the nation’s most influential culinary cabal: the Girl Scouts.

It was a shaker of Thin Mint cookie seasoning. Whoa. Everyone goes apeshit over Thin Mints, so I thought, Thin Mint bacon couldn’t be any worse than this stupid Cinnamon Toast Bacon that tasted like disappointment.

Davida and I went back to multiple grocery stores looking for it, but I think it was a seasonal thing, and it was already gone from shelves So we ordered it online, and thanks to the magic of modern commerce, it was here overnight.

This Thin Mint seasoning is interesting, because rather than just being flavor powder, it actually seems to be some sort of concentrated cookie dirt.

I figured this out because its main ingredient is sugar, but the second one is listed as “cookie crumb,” which is made with flour, cocoa powder, and more sugar.

I tried a heaping teaspoon of it, and to my surprise, discovered that it’s really good.

While it does taste like ground-up cookies, they somehow amped up the chocolate and mint flavoring, which makes it much more useful than just pulverized cookies. It also tastes nearly like the genuine issue, which is awesome. But would Girl Scout bacon be better than Cinnamon Toast Bacon? Only one way to find out: By shoving it up my ass!

I coated a bunch of regular bacon with Thin Mint powder, which immediately sort of caked up into a kind of batter-like substance, and put it in the oven like last time.

I did run into a bit of an issue during baking, however.

I couldn’t tell whether or not the bacon was cooking properly because the Thin Mint powder had obscured my view of the streaky meat. I basically had to guess based off its overall texture and shrinkage ratio, which is not really a complete way to indicate if your bacon’s done right. It is a good way to tell if the pool’s cold, though.

Davida came in and said, “It smells like you’re baking a cake!” Then she took one look at the tray as I was flipping the bacon and made a semi-disgusted face, since it looked like I’d dropped the bacon in a bunch of dirt and stomped on it.

After about 15 minutes, I just decided to call it.

Man, these strips didn’t look so hot. They were almost pitch black in places, and looked as if they were dipped into a pan of used motor oil, but I didn’t smell anything charred, so that was promising.

But damn, this Thin Mint bacon wasn’t just good, it was great.

Not only did it taste candied, the chocolate flavor was front and center without being annoying. I did taste a tiny bit of mint, but whatever was originally there had mostly dissipated during the cooking process. The sugariness made it miles better than that strangely unsweetened Cinnamon Toast Bacon, but I will admit that it was a little cakey in texture, thanks to the cookie crumb.

I guess now that I think about it, people do make chocolate covered bacon, which is always better than I’d like to admit. I just wasn’t expecting the Girl Scouts to open an entire 24-pack of whoop-ass on Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Don’t worry, I wasn’t done fucking around just yet.

Using this new delicious Thin Mint bacon, I decided to make a quick BLT, using just regular ol’ iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, Thin Mint bacon, and some mayo.

Unsurprisingly, this sandwich was good too.

With all those added ingredients, I didn’t even notice the chocolate so much as I did just a general level of sweetness. But I felt guilty about not giving the Cinnamon Toast Crunch flavoring enough of a chance, so I did what any self-respecting person would do and made a new product with it.

Introducing: Cinnamayo™.

This is simply Cinnadust mixed with Hellman’s mayonnaise. Now this is a brand mash-up the world needed, sweet dessert mayo. The last time I tried a dessert-ish mayo for the newsletter (in a form I dubbed Mayoreo), I hated it when trying it by itself, but did not mind its taste so much when I put it on an ice cream sandwich.

A little taste of the Cinnamayo™ was fine, surprisingly, and I didn’t even flinch.

I dabbed some of this new Cinnamayo™ onto my Thin Mint BLT and took a bite.

To my surprise, it wasn’t revolting. In fact, I hate to admit this publicly, but it was secretly really good. I should have hidden this edition behind the paywall, because now the world knows my shame. Does this admission make me a disgusting person? I will accept the affirmative answer, for it will help me heal.

Anyway, this was a really long way for me to tell you guys not to buy that horrid Cinnamon Toast Crunch bacon. It leaves the aftertaste of an air freshener, isn’t sweet, and tastes like corporate pandering bullshit. Hormel, you should have called me. I could have stopped you from doing this. Trust me. I am a professional garbage-taster.

In the meantime, Girl Scouts, if you’re reading this adult-language newsletter, message me. I have this terrific idea for a meat-based product you guys can sell alongside cookies. It’ll make for some really good sandwiches.

And Hellman’s? I have the best cereal flavor mash-up for you. Just wire the money first and we’ll talk.

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Blech. Have any of you guys seen this stuff at the supermarket? If you have, just leave.

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Okay — off to the weekend! I hope you guys have something fun planned, like launching Taco Bell chicken nuggets up your ass with a slingshot. As always, I love you, and I’ll hop into subscriber inboxes next week.