Bacon and Chocolate? Say Hello to Mo's Bacon Bar

At the end of July, Bret and I had a really wonderful date night at Bergamot.  After dinner, we stopped by one of our favorite wine and cheese shops - the Wine and Cheese Cask.  As we perused the store, Bret made a huge discovery - Mo's Bacon Bar!

I had mixed reactions about purchasing this chocolate.  I love chocolate and I adore bacon but would I like the two ingredients together?  Nonetheless, we decided to give it a try and threw it in the basket with our other Wine and Cheese Cask treats.  We put the chocolate bar in our pantry to try out for a dessert sometime but it was soon forgotten as we spent most of August indulging in seasonal summer fruits and local ice creams.  As the weather started to cool recently, I re-discovered the bacon bar in our pantry and finally decided to give it a try.

As the package describes and illustrates, Mo's Bacon Bar contains applewood smoked bacon, alderwood smoked salt and a deep milk chocolate.

When I opened the wrapping, I was overwhelmed by the smell of bacon.  While I love waking up to the smell of bacon in the morning, I wasn't sure that this was what I wanted my chocolate to smell like.

Bret and I each took a square and gave it a try.  I honestly wish we had taken photos of our faces as we took our first bite.  Let's just say that it was not pleasant.  The chocolate was definitely overpowered by the smoky flavor of the bacon and the smoky salt.  While the salt added a nice crunch to the bar, it definitely didn't need any more saltiness!  I think that if the bacon bar had some nuts, like pistachios, it would have helped balance everything out.

There was no way that Bret and I were going to ever eat this chocolate on its own.  I decided to balance out the flavor by adding one of my favorite snack foods - popcorn!  I put a bag of light popcorn in the microwave and when it was done, the kitchen thankfully smelled like something besides bacon!

While I let the popcorn cool a little, I roughly chopped up two squares of the bacon bar.

I added the chocolate to the popcorn and gave it a toss.  I actually did a pretty good job mixing this up because it was hard to find a good photograph of the chocolate with the popcorn.  

The bacon bar was definitely more enjoyable mixed with popcorn.  Every so often, you got a nice chocolate and bacon flavor with your popcorn.  In hindsight, I wish I added some cayenne to the popcorn to get a spicy flavor in there too!

I'm thinking about possibly chopping up the other half of the bacon bar to make a trail mix with nuts and dried fruit.  But what do you think? Any suggestions on how to use Mo's Bacon Bar?