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Maple Bacon Muffin Recipe & The Consumable Christmas

By Michelle Marine

on Nov 09, 2015, Updated Oct 27, 2023

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This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #MakeItMerrier #CollectiveBias

It’s that time of year again. Halloween is over and I know you’ve seen the toylands popping up in all the stores and the Black Friday ads are starting to be leaked already. With the emphasis turning to stuff and things, I thought I’d share a bit about my family’s goal to make it merrier during the holidays by focusing on experiences and yummy food rather than plastic gifts and spending a ton of money. Each year during the holidays, we strive to make memories with good fun and delicious food like the maple bacon muffin recipe I’m sharing today, to savor life to the fullest. After all, it’s life experiences that matter most, not how much stuff we are able to accumulate in our lives!

Maple Bacon Muffin Recipe & The Consumable Christmas

One of my favorite Christmas memories is from 2012, the last Christmas both my grandma and grandpa were still alive. My family had decided a couple years previously that all adult gifts should be consumables – so we could eat or drink and just enjoy. The Consumable Christmas, an idea my parents came up with, is actually really nice. Instead of focusing on and buying lots of things, our Christmas celebrations are defined by good coffee, good food, good fun, and lots of laughter. We don’t think about stuff or worry about transporting them after the fact. And 2012 really embodied that goal well, as we also added in an element of practical jokes with stick on mustaches and had such a blast that year.

So what do I mean by Consumable Christmas? Basically, all the gifts we give our {adult} family members are things we can eat or drink. Some favorite gifts are delicious coffee, like our favorite Starbucks coffee, fine chocolates, and bottles of wine or local scotch. Most of gifts we give are consumed right where we happen to be, so there’s nothing left to transport home. Since some family members always travel quite a distance for our get-togethers, it’s nice not to have to worry about packing extra things.

And you can ask me about the Christmas we busted the window in my van as we packed out to head back to Iowa. Yeah. Not so fun as we tried to repair a windshield and ultimately drove six hours with a cardboard window at the back of my van. But Consumable Christmases negate that! We just eat and drink and focus on each other. Less to pack, less to worry about, more fun for us!We also make a lot of delicious food. One recipe I will share with my family this year is the Maple Bacon Muffin. One way we like to keep our grocery budget down in my immediate family is to eat smaller amounts of better quality meat. I’m sure you’ve heard the recent hubbub about bacon, and other processed meats being bad for you. Well, I can’t really say if that’s true or not, and I’m not ready to give up bacon, because it’s just so dang delicious. But I do try to source locally produced and processed meats from pastured animals, and I think that really makes a difference in quality, and hopefully health, of the meat.

This little maple bacon muffin packs a lot of bacon flavor with just a bit of bacon. The muffin is nice and moist as it’s sweetened naturally with pure maple syrup instead of sugar, and it also tastes really nice with a great cup of coffee. To make these muffins, just mix up the wet and dry ingredients separately, add 6 pieces of crumbled bacon {I love baking bacon at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes and then using the grease to prepare the muffin tins}, and fold wet into dry ingredients. If you’d like a little extra zing, you can also add in small diced jalapeno pepper. Bake the muffins at 375 degrees for about 22 minutes, let cool and enjoy! You can even cook your bacon days (or weeks, if you freeze it) in advance to speed up the cooking process on baking day!

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Maple Bacon Muffin Recipe

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Ingredients

• 2 cups all purpose flour, preferably unbleached
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt, preferably REAL salt
• 3/4 cup maple syrup - the real stuff, please, no fake substitutes
• 1 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 6 slices bacon finely crumbled

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease (guys - I use bacon grease for these muffins) or line muffin pan with cupcake liners.
2. Combine dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Stir to combine.
3. Combine eggs, maple syrup, applesauce, and butter in a small bowl, then fold into the dry ingredients until just combined.
4. Spoon into prepared muffin pans and bake 22-25 minutes, until muffins are golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean.
5. Cool completely, and enjoy!

Did you make this recipe?

Please leave a comment on the blog or share a photo on Instagram tagging @simplifylivelove! I love to see your photos!

I like to buy Starbucks at Target or Costco, but wherever you buy this year, Starbucks has a great deal you’ll want to know about – buy 3 Starbucks products and receive a $5 Starbucks eGift card!

And that’s it! A delicious recipe for your Consumable Christmas! What is one consumable item you would like to give or recipe this year? Be sure to take a look at Starbucks holiday coffee!