Coconut Oatmeal Bacon Bliss Sarnies

This is the first in an ongoing series of recipes inspired by my daughter. To put bacon with oatmeal was her idea. I added coconut because it was on my mind, in my cabinet and, for all the lactose intolerant folks out there, I am having a love affair with the frozen coconut milk based dessert called Coconut Bliss. I used the plain coconut flavor, but they also have coconut pineapple if you can find the brand. It also uses agave rather than sugar for sweetener. Sadly, you may have trouble sourcing some of the flavors of this stuff until later this year due to a severe drought in Thailand, read the Coconut Bliss blog post.

I was sure this recipe wouldn't work out. I veganized this Coconut Oatmeal cookies, used the VERY sexy Allrecipes.com engine to recalculate the thing so it produced only 12 cookies (6 sarnies) and then I added the pancetta dipped in 73% El Rey dark chocolate and that sent the thing over the moon of fabuluousness and back. El Rey sources from Venezuela where the chocolate is fruity and flavorful. I used Bob's Red Mill Egg Replacer and Earth Balance spread and I was very careful to slightly undercook the cookies.

Side ideas- because it's a dessert that begs your own special touch:
- Skip the bacon and go with the cookie and Coconut Bliss scooped in between- so yummy.
- Make it gorgeous and season by alternating chopped, chocolate-dipped pancetta with halved, pitted Rainier cherries; 'tis the season and this would be an exotic dance of sugars

I also love this recipe because, like human nature, it is an expression of ideological contradiction (hypocrisy) all wrapped up in one gorgeous, delicious package. The dessert is entirely vegan except for the chocolate dipped bacon on the rim. We want our cake and to eat it too. We want our meat, but we care about how the animal lived and died.We are at a great crossroads with food. We want to get back to the land, care for our health, eat well, eat in moderation, eat lower on the food chain and yet the sweet and the savory continue to spill out of our souls.