It’s that time of year again when every store has big displays of pink and red merchandise set out to remind you that if you love someone, you had better show it with a box of candy or a bouquet of flowers. I prefer to show my love in a different way. Namely, bacon.

We don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day, but I’m always looking for an excuse to bake something. A few weeks ago, I found myself thinking about using bacon fat in pastry. I’d read that you can sub bacon fat for butter 1:1 in recipes, so I was curious to see what happened. Well, Bacon Bourbon Éclairs happened.

Strain leftover bacon grease into a jar and keep in the fridge — beautiful, no?

Éclairs are easier to make than most people think, and they can be easily customized beyond the traditional chocolate-topped, vanilla creme-filled confection found in bakeries everywhere.

I chose to add bourbon to the vanilla pastry cream because I thought that it would be a nice compliment to the smoky bacon, and because the holidays left us with more bourbon than we could ever drink in our apartment. (Seriously, if you’re a bourbon drinker please come over and give us a hand.) I went a bit heavy-handed with it, but you can adjust to taste.

A quick PSA about bacon: please choose your bacon wisely. Most of the pre-sliced packaged bacon that you’ll find in the store is so paper thin and fatty that by the time you cook it, there is no real meat left to work with. See if your butcher can cut you some thick slabs. For this recipe, I used a product from Trader Joe’s called Bacon Ends and Pieces which is basically a package of scraps that are nice and thick. It doesn’t matter that the strips aren’t whole because you’re just going to cut them up to top your éclairs with anyway!

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Bacon Bourbon Éclairs with Maple Glaze

Ingredients

Bacon

• 1 lb thick cut, smoked bacon

Vanilla Bourbon Pastry Creme

• 1 vanilla bean
• 1/4 c bourbon (I use Maker’s Mark)
• 400 ml milk (1 2/3 c)
• 4 egg yolks
• 80 g granulated sugar (1/2 c + 1 T)
• 30 g cornstarch (1/4 c)
• 25 g butter (2 T)

Choux Pastry for éclairs

• 120 g cake flour (1 cup + 1/2 T)
• 100 ml milk (1/2 cup + 1 T)
• 100 ml water (1/2 cup + 1 T)
• 10 g granulated sugar (1 T)
• 1 pinch of salt
• 40 g butter (5 1/2 T)
• 40 g bacon fat (5 1/2 T)
• 4 eggs

Maple Glaze

• 1 c powdered sugar
• 4 T maple syrup (plus more if needed)

Instructions

Bacon

Lay out the bacon strips in a large skillet in a single layer (work in batches if you need to). Starting on low heat, render the fat from the bacon. When a good amount of fat is rendered, turn up the heat and cook the bacon strips until browned and crispy. Remove the bacon to a paper towel-lined plate. Pour the liquid fat into a glass jar through a sieve. Refrigerate until the fat solidifies. Coarsely chop about ¼ c of the bacon pieces, discarding any white fat (only use the meaty part of the bacon). This will become a topping on our éclairs.

Pastry Cream

Pour the milk into a large saucepan. Cut the vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape the seeds into the milk. Add the vanilla pod and the bourbon. Bring to a simmer and then immediately remove from the heat. Cover the saucepan and let the flavors infuse for 10-15 minutes.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until the color lightens slightly. Whisk in the cornstarch.

Remove the vanilla pod from the saucepan and bring the milk mixture back up to a simmer. Pour about a third of the hot milk into the yolks, whisking quickly so that the yolks don’t cook. When incorporated, pour the yolks and milk back into the saucepan (If you want this to be boozy, feel free to add 1 T more of bourbon at this point).

Bring the mixture up to a boil — it will quickly thicken. Remove from the heat and pour into a bowl. Let it cool for a few minutes before stirring in the butter. Store in the refrigerator covered with plastic wrap resting on the surface of the cream.

Éclairs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a large saucepan, combine milk, water, sugar, salt, butter, and bacon fat. Bring to a boil and immediately remove from the heat.

Add the flour into the liquid, mixing with a spatula until completely incorporated and a sticky dough forms. Return the pan to low heat and stir the dough vigorously for 1 minute to pull excess moisture out.

Transfer the dough into a clean bowl and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Add the eggs to the dough one at a time, incorporating each one completely before adding the next. (Note: adding the eggs will make the dough break into pieces and it will seem like you can’t mix all of the ingredients together. Just keep stirring vigorously — it will come together!)

When ingredients are completely incorporated, transfer dough to a pastry bag. You can either use a very large circular tip, or just cut the bag so that the opening is about 1 inch wide. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper. Pipe straight lines of dough onto the paper, leaving an inch or so in between. For regular éclairs, pipe about 5 inches long. For mini éclairs, pipe 2-3 inches long.

Bake the éclairs for about 10 minutes, until slightly puffed. Then, using the handle of a wooden spoon, prop the oven door open about ¼ to ½ inch and bake for an additional 30 minutes until golden brown and cooked all the way through. Remove to a wire cooling rack and cool completely before filling.

Maple Glaze

Combine the powdered sugar and maple syrup in a bowl wide enough to dip your éclairs into. Take a spoonful of the glaze and let it drip back into the bowl – it should be stiff enough to hold the drip shape for a second or two before it combines back into the rest of the glaze. If your glaze is too stiff, loosen it with a little more syrup. If it’s too runny, add a little bit of powdered sugar.

Assembly

Fit a pastry bag with a small round or star-shaped pastry tip. Before filling the bag, poke 2-3 holes in a line centered along the bottom of each éclair, leaving an inch or so between holes. This will make it easier to fill them.

Fill the pastry bag with your chilled pastry cream. Insert the tip into each hole and fill until the pastry tip is pushed out of the éclair. Be careful not to overfill.

Hold each éclair with two hands and dip the top (NOT the side with the holes) into the glaze. Let the excess glaze run off and then top with some of the chopped bacon.

Storage: Éclairs are best the day they are made. If you fill them and store them in the fridge (the pastry cream needs to stay cold), you’ll end up with soggy éclairs. If you don’t plan to serve them immediately, you can make the éclairs and the filling and store them separately until you’re ready to fill them. The glaze can be whipped up in a matter of minutes.

Pastry Cream and Éclair recipes adapted from Laduree: The Sweet Recipes