Cupcakes With Bacon Cream Filling

You heard me.

In early November, we celebrated girlfriend's birthday, our decision to shack up together in cozy San Francisco bliss, and my new life as a cat-mom with a fancy little shindig at the apartment. This is the same occasion where I discovered the to-die-for chocolate stout cake recipe on epicurious.com. I also decided to try my hand at filling cupcakes with tasty vanilla cream.

And I bought all of the implements to complete my project, finally replacing the muffin tins I had lost and picking up some pastry bags and tips for the filling portion of the program. I found a basic vanilla cream filling recipe online from a fellow baker-blogger and felt satisfied enough with the positive comments to try it.

It didn't turn out great (so thank god for that chocolate stout cupcake recipe I can't stop talking about). First of all, the filling recipe called for a lot of powdered confectioners sugar, which I had on the shelf, but apparently hadn't touched in a year. The result: Really lumpy confectioners sugar, which not only didn't blend well, but also clogged the tips on the pastry bags. Some cupcakes got tons of filling, some got zero. Second problem: Shortening.

I totally hate shortening. Shortening tastes like slippery. This filling recipe called for shortening and I knew I shouldn't do it but I did it anyway because it was my first time doing it. And so the filling--at least in the cupcakes that didn't fall victim to the clogging--tasted like white vanilla slippery. When girlfriend and I sampled one before the guests arrived, I said,

"I hate shortening. It tastes like slippery." [Pause, thinking about my soft fat alternatives.] "Wouldn't this be great with bacon fat instead?!"

Flash forward a few weeks. It's Sunday, one week after having made a fantastic breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast at home. I've got a few tablespoons of bacon fat in the fridge, and it's a few hours before Colleen's birthday potluck. I decide to give the bacon cream filling concept a go.

I scour the interwebs for a different decent chocolate cake recipe, just to switch it up a bit. All signs point me to a devil's food cake recipe from that lady Martha. I'll summarize the recipe with two words: Big. Disappointment. The cake really lacked the deep chocolate flavor I was looking for. I guess I also could have made it wrong, too.

But no matter, because it was the bacon cream filling that was really supposed to shine anyway.

I adapted this recipe from the Delish blog
(note that there's not a spec of slippery shortening in sight, yay!). I have no idea if it's really okay to just dump a bunch of bacon fat into a recipe and call it even. But no one vomited or immediately died, so I'm assuming it's not a short-term problem. I can't make any guarantees about long-term artery health, however.

Bacon Cream Cupcake Filling
fills up to 36 cupcakes

3 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
3 tbsp bacon fat [note: Some potluck people complained that the bacon flavor wasn't strong enough. I might next time take this up to 4 tbsp fat and 2 tbsp butter to really make it pop.]
1 1/2 c confectioners sugar
3/4 c marshmallow creme
1 1/2 tbsp heavy cream

Using a mixer, beat the butter and bacon fat with the confectioners sugar, marshmallow creme and heavy cream until fluffy and bacon-y. Transfer filling to a pastry bag with 1/4 inch tip.

Insert the tip of the pastry bag into the middle of each cupcake; squeeze lightly for about 5-7 seconds to fill with cream.