Add Chocolate for International Bacon Day

Until a few years ago, we couldn't have celebrated this international fun food holiday here on The Chocolate Cult.  Your Chocolate Priestess had never heard of anyone adding chocolate to bacon (or bacon to chocolate) then suddenly it was everywhere.  And yet until this year I had never tried it.  You see bacon plus chocolate... well, it is one of those things I was open to trying if I was given some but I didn't feel it was worth the risk to spend money on.  The folks who took over Cero's Candies sent us their "Sweet Pig Twig" to try.  Now this is a product you need to use quickly, within a few days because of the bacon and I did so way back in March, sharing it with three others so you could get a well-rounded review from three people who had never tried bacon with chocolate and one who had it in the past in a candy bar that also had coffee.

Let's start off with the amazing fact that this is a full length (7.25 inches) piece of smoked and brown sugared cured bacon.  This isn't a little piece, this isn't just bacon added to a candy bar or some brownies as I've read about in the past, this is you getting a piece of bacon like you might at breakfast plus a lot of dark chocolate.  The chocolate is real dark chocolate made with chocolate liquor and cocoa butter with no added fats though it does have soy lecithin in case you have a very sensitive soy allergy.  Let's look at the four different views of this "Sweet Pig Twig."

Cero's Bacon cooked and waiting for chocolate.

I could taste the bacon in full glory.  The quarter of the strip I tried was very chewy, it was slightly salty but I could also taste the smoked nature of the bacon as well as the brown sugar's tang.  For me the dark chocolate's bitterness was an interesting addition but then I really like darker chocolate.  I don't think this is the sort of treat I'd want to eat an entire strip of by myself, the flavors were very intense, but I would certainly share it with another person.

This was not the case for two of the folks who tried it with me.  One of them got an end piece and it was far too crunchy and hard for him, he felt that the saltyness overpowered the dark chocolate whose bitterness was too intense.  Now this person does like dark chocolate but is more of a fan of milk.  This individual also is not a fan of hard or chewy things because they tend to hurt his jaw.

Pick these up in their store

The other sampler who did not like this, disliked it for other reasons.  He liked the crunchyness (his was also an end piece) but after one bite the bitterness of the chocolate was too much for him; he prefers the milk and even the white chocolates.  He had been looking forward to the bacon, he loves him some bacon, but said he really could not taste it.

Finally our fourth tester had a middle piece like me but his was both chewy and crunchy -- seems like we got a lot of variety in terms of texture for this treat.  He, too, could taste the smokyness and the sugar but agreed that that the salt wasn't countered best by the darker chocolate.  He liked it, he assured me of that, but felt it might have been much better with a lighter chocolate. He is one of our Mocha Acolytes who had the bacon, coffee, and dark chocolate bar in the past that was a gift, not a featured review.

There you have it, in honor of "International Bacon Day," a chocolate covered strip of real bacon from Cero's Candies.  While our team of four disagreed about the product, we all agreed that the chocolate was quality dark and the bacon was honest to goodness bacon of a high quality as well.  Therefore, the "Sweet Pig Twig" gets our approval as a Sacrament for The Chocolate Cult.  However this would have to be a very rare treat for any of us and we encourage Cero's Candies to try this treat with other types of chocolate to see how that balances with the bacon they use.