Bacon and cupcakes

I've  never been a big fan of mixing sweet and savory, although certain things, like pancakes and bacon, will always belong together. Getting a little syrup on your bacon as it shares a plate with your pancakes is one thing. Eating bacon surrounded by cake and mixed with frosting is another thing completely.

That was what I faced at Chicago's More Cupcakes on our third stop of the cupcake crawl. More is known for its sweet/savory combinations, such as Bacon Maple and BLT, and sophisticated menu. When Sara and I were doing our research prior to the crawl and saw More's website, we realized, because I was planning a story for The State Journal-Register, that I should try one of the unusual flavors. It would make for a better story, right? When I saw the Bacon Maple was among More's choices the day we stopped in, I decided to take a deep breath and go for it.

It wasn't easy picking the Bacon Maple, mind you. There were some other really great-looking flavors, such as lemon mirangue, with its toasted peaks of mirangue frosting, and white velvet, which Sara chose (that one was quite tasty). But I gamely ordered my Bacon Maple, to the skepticism of the young girl behind the counter, and forked over nearly $5 for the privilege.

More is a tiny, minimalist shop with no seating and not much room to move around when you happen to end up in there at the same time as a Chicago Chocolate Tour group. Yep, we saw several of them during the course of our crawl. Fortunately, we were able to put in our orders before the tour group swamped the single register, and we elbowed our way out the door and into the Starbucks next door, where Sara ordered a coffee to assuage our guilt over using their seating.

Simply stated, the Bacon Maple was yucky. Bacon bits were baked into the maple-flavored cake, and they were also mixed into the fluffy maple frosting. The thick piece of bacon brittle on top was the epitome of the sweet/savory combo -- I decided to eat it in one bite, and that bite convinced me that I would be throwing out the rest of the cupcake. The sickening sweetness of the brittle paired with the salty bacon aftertaste gave me my first queasiness of the day. Sara tried a bite and said she liked it, despite the fact that she doesn't care for bacon in general, but she wasn't willing to finish the rest.

And so, I must apologize to the Bacon Maple for how coldly I pitched it into the garbage. It was a pretty cupcake, but unfortunately most of its beauty was in the beholding.