Bacon. Bacon on Muffins. Need I Say More?

Creativity is a must sometimes. For example, when you’re too lazy to go out to buy an important ingredient for a new recipe. Say, when you want to make Bacon Pineapple Muffins in which corn meal is the key ingredient for the muffin itself and you don’t have any corn meal or, you know, something along those lines.

Okay. Fine. Something exactly along those lines.

Having no corn meal, having no desire to make a late-night dash or an early-morning run to the store and being determined to have a muffin with bacon and pineapple in it, I decided to improvise. And at this point, this is where I must say: Thank you, Jiffy Corn Bread Mix. Thank you very much.

Yes, I know you can make corn muffins from scratch. They would be darn right tasty, too. Or, when you’re short on a key ingredient, you can improvise and be just as happy. Because, let’s be honest. The only reason I was making these muffins was because they were going to be a carrier for bacon, an ingredient I fully planned on doubling as soon as I read the recipe.

These muffins came from an obscure, goodness only knows where they got it, muffins and only muffins cookbook that my parents used during our B&B days. Many of the muffins have been tried and loved. For some odd, unexplainable reason, we had not made these Bacon Pineapple Muffins. However, we had made the rather icky Cantaloupe Muffins because we had a lot of cantaloupe to use before it went bad. Let me tell you, we didn’t make that mistake again. Bleh!

Anyhow, the muffins were easy. Make a corn muffin base from scratch or use Jiffy Corn Bread Mix (like me). Fold in half a cup of shredded, canned pineapple. Pour muffins into muffin tins lined with paper things. I definitely recommend using the cupcake liners because even with the tins greased up with lots of PAM, the muffins stuck to the bottoms. I blame the pineapple. However, I will also note that since I was using a Texas-sized muffin tin rather than a normal, itty-bitty muffin tin, cupcake liners weren’t much of an option. Oh well…

Lastly, top with bacon. Lots of bacon. I think the recipe called for something absurd – like only using four or five strips of fried bacon crumbled on top. Absurd! Use more. Use lots. I think I used 10 strips of bacon.

And then you bake them. That’s it.

Well, aside from spreading loads of butter on them when they’re fresh out of the oven and eating them as quickly as possible.