Blackberry Bacon Grilled Cheese

Although I’m trying to eat healthily, I still have cravings. I’m getting better at ignoring them or switching them into healthier foods like sweet fruit instead of sweet baked goods. But sometimes there’s just no healthy substitute for your craving, and that’s where I am now. I found this Blackberry Bacon Grilled Cheese recipe, and I fell in love! It has melty cheese in my favorite kind of bread (sourdough) plus sweet blackberry, hot and spicy peppers, and savory, salty BACON! I don’t have bacon very often, but I love the stuff!! I’ve tried it for every meal and even in cocktails. Now I need to try it in this grilled cheese sandwich.

Blackberry Bacon Grilled Cheese is the perfect combination of savory and sweet! Made with Swiss cheese, blackberry jam, fresh jalapeños, and crispy bacon, it’s a must try for ALL grilled cheese lovers!

The Ingredients

I had a package of bacon in my freezer leftover from the Bacon Wrapped Sausage Stuffing I made last Thanksgiving. I bought two packs just in case. Now I get to use the extra.

I also had butter in the fridge, so that left me to buy everything else. None of the ingredients were difficult to find at my usual grocery store, though, and shopping was easy. I found sliced Swiss cheese in the dairy section and sugar-free seedless blackberry jam on some random aisle.

The sourdough bread came straight from the bakery. There’s nothing like a freshly baked loaf of bread, and bread is such an important part of any sandwich. So important, in fact, that I made this recipe the same day I bought the bread so it would be at its freshest.

The Process

A grilled cheese sandwich is just a touch more complicated than your run-of-the-mill sandwich, but not by much. I kicked things off by frying up 4 strips of bacon. Here’s how my time was spent:

• 12 minutes to fry the bacon
• 8 minutes to prep and cook the sandwich
• 20 minutes total

Just a bit longer than the 15 minutes listed,  but the recipe does call for cooked bacon. I included the time to cook it in my total because I doubt the average person would have cooked bacon lying around.

The Prep Work

But back to that Blackberry Bacon Grilled Cheese. Once the bacon was done, I poured the bacon grease out of the skillet and assembled my sandwich.

Buttering the bread can be tricky if you use cold butter. Trying to spread cold butter on soft bread just ends up shredding the bread. I anticipated this and set mine out a good 30 minutes before cooking.

Tip: If you are using cold butter, I suggest using your microwave to soften a stick of butter, then cut off the amount you need for this recipe (1 tablespoon). The rest can be returned safely to your refrigerator. You could try to soften just 1 tablespoon, but it’s more likely you will simply melt it. My microwave isn’t fancy, and it comes with a butter softening setting per stick. I’m guessing it’s a common feature.

Assembly & Cooking

Next, you need to assemble your grilled cheese. This part was quick and easy and ended up being very colorful (I love colorful food!). Then I added both halves to my 12-inch nonstick skillet and cooked it up.

The recipe lists 4-5 minutes per side, but mine cooked a bit faster. I’d say it was more like 3 minutes per side since my skillet was already heated from frying the bacon. In fact, I think I could have turned the heat down from 6 to closer to 4 to keep the bread from burning. (FYI, I use an electric stove.)