A Bouquet of Roses for your husband as a gift is almost certainly to garner you not a ‘aw, thank you’, but a ‘why’d you spend the money on those!?’ kind of response. HOWEVER, add bacon, and the story changes! Dip the bacon roses in chocolate and you are playing at a whole new level!
I was looking at funny pictures over at Failblog the other day, and I came across a WIN! The win was the creation of a bacon bouquet. I thought that this would be a perfect father’s day gift! Checking out the blog that followed through with instructions from instructables, I was a little disappointed to see that I had to drill through my cupcake pan to make these their way!
So, I improvised, and made something better using only a few soaked toothpicks and my broiler pan to create a beautiful ‘floral’ arrangement!
Acme Fresh Market has a great step-by-step video on creating Chocolate Dipped Bacon Roses here.
Instructions on How to Make a Bacon Bouquet
What you will need
- 1 Pound Of Bacon
- 1 Broiled Pan
- 3 Dozen Tooth Picks
- Chocolate Chips
- 1 to 1.5 Dozen Rose Stems (Real, Fake, Or Sturdy Outdoor Weeds)
Bacon Bouquet Step 1: Roll it Up
The first step in making a bacon bouquet is to open up your package of bacon (one package is sufficient) and roll each piece of bacon up into a cylinder shape. When doing so be sure to note that one side of each piece of bacon is flat, and the other side is a little more curvy. Take each rolled up piece and place the FLAT, rolled side down on an even surface.
Loose Bacon Rolls make the roses look more Bloomed – Tight Bacon Rolls make the roses look more Fresh/Tight
Bacon Bouquet Step 2: Pan Placement
Place your rolled meat flowers on a pan in an array of 4 wide by 5 wide (assuming you got 20 pieces of bacon out of your 1 lb) Place each piece about 1 1/2 inches apart. Make sure you place the flat side of the rolled bacon pieces down.
You may find that your bacon will not stand up! This is the reason why instructable suggested you do your cooking in a drilled out cupcake pan as a means to brace each rose. Expensive and wasteful! I have a better idea – Soaked Toothpicks.
Bacon Bouquet Step 3: Soak your Toothpicks
Soak them for 30 minutes. I soaked mine for 5 and they turned out just fine.
Bacon Bouquet Step 4: Brace it up!
Stab each bacon rose with toothpicks on as many sides as necessary to fully brace the system. See the images below. The Toothpicks don’t have to go far into the bacon, just as long as they pierce the first wrapped layer. At this time, you may want to loosen some of your bacon roses a little to give them a more bloomed look.
Bacon Bouquet Step 5: Preheat your Oven to 400 degrees
When I was preparing my bacon on the broiled pan, I was very worried that I was going to have an oven full of grease splatters, so I built fancy tin foil walls around the pan- which I didn’t need to do.
Bacon Bouquet Step 6:Bake it
Cook the Bacon for 40 to 50 minutes at 400 degrees. I have a convection over so mine took 45 minutes, you may find you need to set your oven to 425 and go 50 minutes for conventional- just watch it!
Bacon Bouquet Step 7: Remove the roses from the oven
I was pleasantly surprised at how clean of a process it was to cook bacon in this fashion. The minimal bacon surface area meant that all the grease flowed down, and through the holes of the broiler pan. Bacon was indeed stuck to the pan with a little bit of charred grease, however each came off completely with tongs or your fingers (watch out, they come out hot!)
Bacon Bouquet Step 8: Dip in Chocolate
You may choose to dip your roses in chocolate. We prefer dark chocolate or semi-sweet but you can also use milk chocolate. Melt in 30 second intervals until fully melted. For a pound of bacon, you won’t need more than 1/2 bag of chocolate.
Bacon Bouquet Step 9: Prepare the Stems
As I see it, you have three options for stems for your arrangement:
- Real Roses: Crop off the Petals and save them for a romantic bedtime!
- Artificial Roses: Crop off the Petals and Save them for, no, that’s lame, throw them away
- Weed Roses: My back yard has a great number of horrible wild rose bushes, aka prickers.
Artificial Roses
I found artificial roses at the Dollar Tree that work great. They are cheap so the buds are really easy to pop off. If you buy expensive artificial roses, you might find they are glued more secure and difficult to pop off.
Weed Roses – Cheapest!
I went into the backyard and pulled a dozen shoots of the weeds- they have thorns, can be cut to length, and the leaves are ultra genuine! I don’t have instructions for real roses or fake ones, but, I am sure you can figure it out!
Bacon Bouquet Step 10: Attach the bacon to the rose stems
My ‘rose stems’ end in a cut, so it was quite easy to find the center of each bacon rose, and insert the stem about 1/2″ into the flat side. I was tempted to ‘secure’ them with the ‘system’ below, but I decided against it..
Bacon Bouquet Step 11: Present your Roses!
Place in a vase and give the gift of bacon roses!
You can add water to your vase if you like- but you are only keeping the leaves alive, not the petals.
If you are having a party, make sure you gather a lot more stems and make a few dozen of these!
A bouquet your husband will adore.
A craft your kids will care about – even a teenager, maybe? I don’t have any, yet, but, hit high on my coolness meter.
Think you will make a bacon bouquet this year?
Tell me your thoughts!
