Nothing says “holiday season” quite like the delicious combination of sweet maple syrup and salty, crispy bacon—oh, and butter! This Maple Bacon Compound Butter recipe is the perfect balance of flavors that will elevate any meal, from breakfast toast to dinner rolls. Not only is it a fantastic spread, but it’s also an easy, budget-friendly gift that shows your loved ones you care with a homemade touch, without any gourmet price tag!
We have some great tips for you plus pics and the recipe and instructions below.
To make this recipe, you’ll need unsalted sticks of butter, dark brown sugar, fine sea salt, pure maple syrup, and cooked bacon. Read on for substitution tips and what you can leave out and still get good results.
Ways to use flavored butter
- On a snack board that features breads and crackers
- On a breakfast board with waffles, crepes or pancakes
- Feature this homemade condiment on a butter board! (Naturally.)
- In a chocolate chip cookie recipe (or any cookie recipe, let’s be real here)
- As a Christmas food gift idea, since homemade gifts are as charming and welcome as ever, maybe even more so in an age of gift cards
- To top proteins such as chicken and pork chops
- Dress up cooked carrots, sweet potatoes, or green beans
- Drizzle flavored butters like this over butternut squash ravioli
- Melted and spooned over sauteed apples or mug cake
- Headed to a house brunch? Flavored butter recipes like this one make pumpkin bread, banana bread, and other quick breads sing.
Since these make great gifts but your recipient may not know all the wonderful ways to use this compound butter recipe, a small card with a printout of these ideas may be helpful and add to the charm of the gift.
Tips for making this bacon butter recipe
- If you want it sweeter, feel free to add another 2 tablespoons of dark brown sugar, or an extra tablespoon of maple syrup.
- You can use salted or unsalted butter, but using unsalted allows you to control how much salt you use. You can leave out the extra salt entirely if you wish.
- Sea salt is less salty than table salt, and I find it has a cleaner taste and doesn’t overpower the sweetness. If table salt is all you have, reduce to ⅛ teaspoon (a pinch, basically), or if you are using salted butter, do the same thing: reduce the additional salt.
- If you don’t have pure maple syrup, I don’t recommend using the pancake syrup. It’s just too thick to mix well and tastes pretty artificial in this recipe. You could try using maple bacon for a light maple flavor, maple extract, or leave it out and increase the dark brown sugar by 2 tablespoons, which has a molasses finish.
Here are the tools we recommend for this recipe
- Frying pan
- Tongs
- Paper towel
- Mixing bowl
- Large spoon
- Measuring spoon
- Measuring cup
- Wax paper
- Two teaspoons or one teaspoon and a small spatula
- Scissors or kitchen shears
- Thin ribbon (if wrapping these as gifts)
Flavored Butter Recipe: Bacon Maple Butter
Also called compound butter, here’s a recipe for homemade butter that includes crisp bacon, pure maple syrup, and dark brown sugar. It’s lightly sweet and makes a great, budget-friendly gift, too.
Ingredients
- ½ lb (2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 6 oz high-quality plain or hickory bacon
- ¼ c dark brown sugar
- 2 T pure maple syrup
- ½ t of finely ground sea salt
Instructions
- Unwrap the butter into a medium bowl and let it soften at room temperature. Don’t microwave or heat the butter at all, so you’ll need a bit of patience. A full hour should bring all of the butter to a soft texture. [Pro Tip: To speed up the softening process, cut the butter into ¼ inch slices to increase surface area. It should be soft enough to stir easily in about 20 minutes.] Set aside.
- In a frying pan, cook the bacon until very crispy but not burned. Use the tongs to remove cooked bacon to a paper towel to drain the extra fat. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, crumble the bacon and discard any obvious hard or gristly pieces.
- Using a large spoon, stir the butter to bring it to a smooth, batter-like consistency. Add the cooked bacon crumbles, maple, brown sugar, and sea salt.
- Combine well, until sugar and bacon appear evenly distributed. Set the bowl aside.
- Cut two 8-inch lengths of wax paper. Set one length aside. You may need to weigh it down so it doesn’t curl up while you work.
- Spoon out the butter mixture into the center of the wax paper. Using two spoons or a spatula and spoon (see photo) loosely nudge the soft butter mixture into a 5-inch long rectangle.
- Using both hands, slowly roll up the paper with the butter like you might with a burrito. As you roll, “plump” the log as you go, so the butter fills out the wax paper. It’s ok if it’s not perfectly cylindrical; it might actually seem a bit rectangular—that’s part of the charm of homemade gifts.
- Do the same with the other butter “log” and set them both in the refrigerator to harden. After about 30 minutes, remove for step 9.
- If wrapping these for gifts: Cut four six-inch ribbon curls and tie off each end (see photo). If there is a lot of wax paper on each end, trim off with kitchen shears or scissors. Add a gift tag to the center or dangled from another section of ribbon tied to one end.
- If these aren’t meant to be gifts, you can remove the logs from the wax paper and store them in a butter dish or covered container, or keep in the wax paper and unroll as needed for serving.
- Keep the compound butter chilled until ready to use; remove to room temp to soften about 20 minutes before ready to use in a recipe or as a spread.
- You can freeze them up to six months sealed tightly, preferably double-wrapped in baggies to protect them from freezer burn. I would not freeze these more than once after bringing them to temp.
Notes
Tools:
- Frying pan
- Tongs
- Paper towel
- Mixing bowl
- Large spoon
- Two teaspoons or one teaspoon and a small spatula
- Measuring spoon
- Measuring cup
- Wax paper
- Scissors or kitchen shears
- Thin ribbon (if wrapping these as gifts)
The bottom line
Remember that the beauty of homemade food gifts is they are often imperfect and not that polished. One of my butter logs came out bigger than the other. You can even make one big one instead of two; or double the recipe for more. You can keep it all for yourself. Taste-testing is also the gift you give yourself, so if you want it sweeter or bacon-ier, it’s a very forgiving maple butter recipe: just add more.
