223. BITCH BACON BREAD STICKS

30 slices of thinly sliced bacon (about)
box of grissini bread sticks
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons chili powder

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Wrap a thin slice of bacon around each long, skinny bread stick in a delightful spiral of fat. Mix together brown sugar and chili powder in a long, shallow dish (long enough to lay a bread stick down in) and smash out any lumps with a fork and generally mix it all up real good. Roll each bacon-wrapped bread stick in that hot sugar and set them, one by one, on the rack of a broiler pan, about 1/2 inch apart, and then bake them for about 20 minutes - during which time that sugar will caramelize in the bacon fat and the bacon will turn wonderfully golden. They'll then be loosened with a spatula and cooled on that rack on the counter for a few minutes before they are placed on a serving platter, but that's okay - you want to eat 'em at room temp, anyway.


courtesy of: The Sweet Potato Queens' Big-Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner), by Jill Conner Browne. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003. p. 79