Servings: 2
Cooking Time: 15 Minutes
Ingredients
What you need
- 4 cups Baby Spinach
- 6 Strips Bacon
- 4 Strawberries
- Balsamic Reduction or other dressing
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil or Coconut Oil
Method
- Make Bacon Roses
Preheat oven to 375ºF/190ºC - Take each strip of bacon, and roll it into a rose shape. If the bacon strips are wide, you’ll make more delicate, realistic looking roses by cutting them in half lengthwise before you begin rolling them up.
- To make them look more realistic, leave them slightly loose and let the edges fold over upon themselves at times. I used the edge with the fat on the top of the rose, and that seemed to work well.
- Place the bacon roses into small muffin tins or silicone ice cube trays to help them hold their shape as you bake them. I used silicone cube – shaped ice cube trays, and they were the perfect size for holding the roses up and together. If you are using tiny muffin tins to hold the bacon roses, you may need to add aluminum foil to the tins or use toothpicks to help keep them in place.
- Keep checking on them to make sure they aren’t falling over or burning. Bake the bacon roses in the oven until they get brown and crisp. If the roses are browning on the top but are uncooked on the bottom, carefully flip them over to cook the bottoms for a few minutes.
- Make strawberry hearts
- Cut the stems off the strawberries.
- Cut a small v-shaped wedge out of the top center part of the strawberries to make them look like hearts. Cut the shaped strawberries in slices to form several thinner strawberry hearts from each strawberry.
- Put the salad together
- Wash and spin dry the baby spinach leaves, and start arranging them, right side up, in small groups of leaves into which you will place your bacon roses.
- Strategically place your bacon roses and strawberry hearts on the bed of baby spinach, creating a beautiful salad.
- Drizzle with the dressing of your choice. I love using a homemade balsamic reduction with either olive or melted coconut oil. Salsa rose is another great choice for this salad.
