project bacon

i've been obsessing over bacon lately.
after years of vegetarianism, i started eating bacon at the beginning of this year, and like many former vegetarians (and naughty jews) i know - i'm fascinated with bacon.
one tried and true bacon confection that everyone seems to love: bacon-wrapped figs (sometimes stuffed with gorgonzola) - perhaps aryn will guest blog that tutorial.
some other bacon treasures i've discovered are:

• the bacon candy bar. bacon + chocolate, what could be bad? other than the fact that it costs $6
• this question i found on the internet: how much bacon should be added to rice krispies treats?
  
• and finally, bacon cups.

a few weeks back, while all i could think about was breaking my "master cleanse" fast - i found the idea for bacon cups on the blog not martha. if you've had any interaction with me since then you've already heard about these. they are inspired by the infamous bacon placemat, but then not martha took it to a whole new three-dimensional level. i really recommend reading her tutorial - because she has beautiful photos and her cups turned out way better than ours.
but since i've been talking it up so much, here are the photos from our attempt at bacon cups.first of all, my muffin tins were too small to wrap bacon around, so sele generously offered her ceramic ramekins. these were nearly the right size and shape, but a little too short and squat - as in the bacon couldn't wrap all the way around the cup, which compromised the structural integrity of the finished product.i agonized over what to fill the bacon cups with - since the salad was pretty but i thought a kind of lame attempt to pretend that eating bacon cups is a healthy choice. we decided to try several different fillings: egg salad, regular salad, caramelized peaches and apples.the whole process was highly enjoyable and the bacon cups were very tasty albeit ugly. the tips i have for those of you who want to make your own bacon cups are this:
use large muffin tins, like not martha says - i think that shape would work better.i only thought of this after the fact, but i think weaving a placemat out of the bacon and then laying it over the cup mold may work better than what we did, which was to weave directly on the cup. but i'd have to try it to see.
document the process and share it back to us - so we can all learn from each others' bacon adventures.