A friend of mine who has a food blog posted a picture of a woven slab of bacon on Facebook and I decided I could build on that and make it more fun for my boys.
1. Take out 3 pieces of bacon per person and slice them in half. I am making 2 of the final product, so I need 6 pieces. I use turkey bacon. My sons don't really seem to know the difference, yet.
2. I line up 3 of the half-pieces like this on my Pampered Chef Large Bar Pan. I'm sure you can do this on a regular cookie sheet or in a skillet, you would need to really reduce the baking time, though.
3. Then I begin to weave the pieces to form a mat.
4. Then I put my bar pan in a cold oven and turn it on at 400F. My oven takes 10 minutes to reach that temperature. Once it reaches 400, I bake for an additional 20 minutes.
5. While it is baking, I prepare the toast Xs. After toasting a piece of wheat bread, I remove the crusts and cut it into 12 squares. I then cut each of these squares into an X shape. My kids will eat the crusts and pieces, but you could easily food process the pieces for breadcrumbs.
Depending on the size of your piece of bread, you need 4-5 Xs per serving. I'm sure you could do this with cheese, if you don't eat bread.
6. I then cut grape tomatoes into 4 slices. You need 4-5 slices per serving and I don't usually use the end pieces on the final product, but my 4-year old will eat them on the side.
7. I serve it on a slab of toast.
8. I put the cooked bacon slab on top of the toast.
9. I then add the toast Xs and the tomato Os.
Yes, I know their plates are orange and blue. My Florida Gators have their last regular season basketball game at Kentucky this afternoon. Go Gators!
10. Serve to some very happy children with fruit.
