Umami? Who, Me?

Leaving aside the more avant garde (Heston Blumenthal, this mean you...), there are a lot of flavours that can be used in both sweet and savoury recipes...

...lemon...

Pictures: The Creative Pot and Three Squabbling Asians

...peanut butter (and, come to that, all sorts of nuts)...

Pictures: Dishing the Divine and Let's Start Simple

...honey (and often maple syrup, too)...

Pictures: The Girl Who Ate Everything and Fisher & Paykel

But do you think that both options work? As far as I’m concerned, peanuts belong firmly on the sweet side of the fence, preferably paired with chocolate and / or caramel. Reese’s peanut butter cups, Snickers bars M&Ms and all kinds of questionable mass-produced suchness* can be devoured in single bounds. Satay sauce, on the other hand, leaves me cold.

Almonds suggest many sweet options than savoury ones – friands, marzipan, amaretti, clafoutis, praline...

Lemon can be a bit more hit and miss. At first glance, it brings to mind dodgy msg-laden Chinese takeaway lemon chicken, and should be avoided like the plague. But lemon with fish can be a great combination. Or lemon risotto. Or with pasta and ricotta...

The one that gets me again and again is bacon. To me, it is unquestionably savoury (hence the curious distaste for the bacon and egg icecream). But I seem to be in a minority...

Bacon meets maple syrup in French toast**

Picture: Tres Lola on Flickr

Bacon with candied popcorn...

Picture: Daily Feed

Bacon chocolate chip cookies...

Picture: Ketchup to Chutney

Maple bacon corn muffins...

Picture: A Spicy Perspective

Sage biscuits with bacon, strawberries and honey crème fraiche

Picture: Zested

Bacon doughnuts...

Picture: Under the High Chair

Bacon cupcakes ...

Picture: 52 Kitchen Adventures

Bacon and strawberry salad (got to get some greens with that bacon every once in a while)...

Picture: Caper Berry

There are even ways to combine the bacon with the peanut butter...

Picture: New England Candy Co on Etsy

For me, these really takes the prize... bacon brownies. No bacon-as-salty-window-dressing here, these have the bacon baked right in. And there are two kinds!

Pictures: The Hungry Engineer... here and here (and the blondies have bourbon as well as bacon!)

Surely only an engineer could come up with these! But they pop up all over the interwebs once you start to fall down that rabbit hole...

But if anybody could convert me to baking with bacon, it might be Lemon Pi... with these macarons... They make bacon look so refined***.

Picture: Lemon Pi

Chances of bacon going out of fashion any time soon?

Picture: Cosmic Firefly on Etsy

* I appear to have invented a word (again). Not necessarily elegant, but useful. And slightly different to suchlike. Hmmm, italics on part of a word. Is that supposed to be done?
** French toast, as far as I’m concerned, should only ever be accompanied by Heinz tomato ketchup and, of course, more French toast.
*** The elegant sort of refined, I mean; not the awful processed kind of refined.