I tried this both ways partial cooking bacon and baking at 300 and raw bacon and cooking at 250 for a longer time. The raw way at 250 is much better bacon and brown sugar soaks into the craker and tastes so much better
I made these for a pot luck and they were a huge hit...the crackers didn't get too greasy and smelled even better on Day 2....I used dark brown sugar...the only think I would recommend is that you should use a sieve or colander to help spread to brown sugar more evenly...hard to do with a spoon. Also I put the bacon the freezer for a few minutes to firm it up to make cutting it easier, just a personal preference but otherwise without doing that the heat from my hands melted the bacon fat and it was harder to pull apart slices for each cracker. I'll make this again and again....after about 45 minutes in the oven at 250F, upped it to 300F, watched carefully and then broiled them for a couple minutes to get any remaining sugar to melt and caramelize.
I mixed cooked chopped bacon with the brown sugar and blended it all with cream cheese before spreading on the crackers (then no need to toast). Unbelieveably delicious. My husband saved some extra for his breakfast bagel.
This is a really great recipe. Really simple and guaranteed to be a crowd pleaser. I used Ritz crackers IPO Club crackers. I have an electric oven that runs a little slow so I baked these at 275 for an hour and a half. You need to bake these long and slow to really get the best results. I baked them on a jelly roll pan with aluminum foil laid out no need to bake on a rack I wanted the crackers to soak up the grease that's what makes these good. Gone in NO time.
If you can't get extremely lean bacon I would think that precooking the bacon till 90% done would really help this recipe to not be greasy...and it would take lots less time to bake. Otherwise I'd bake them on a rack in the pan so most of the bacon grease could run off.
I just made a trial-run of these. They are very good. The only problem was the 250 degree oven wasn't working. I moved mine to 275 degree's and that was perfect! They weren't greasy or too sweet at all!
As I read other comments I decided to make this recipe leaner by pre-cooking the bacon a little more and get rid of the grease. I found it to be very dry and the brown sugar didn't "melt." I think it needed more of the grease to dissolve the sugar and crisp up. I'll try it again.
I have made this easy recipe for many years and always gotten rave reviews. To reduce calories and mess I don't even use any brown sugar and people still love them. I do always cook them on a rack to prevent them from becoming too oily and to prevent oven flare-ups.
This is great however I would bake at 350 degrees. 250 degrees did not work at all in my electric oven. Sandy
