Maple Bacon Cupcakes

To start out, I would just like to thank everyone for your kind words and huge amount of hits to my blog in response to the 25 Things I've Learned in the Past 25 Years post. It was a wonderful birthday gift and I hope to add more of my personal thoughts and feelings into normal posts from now on.

I had an absolutely perfect weekend with Tom in the White Mountains. I had never been so I was completely blown away by the natural beauty that surrounds that area. The picture above is from the Flume Gorge. If you've never been before, even if you're not an outdoorsy person, I highly recommend it. On Sunday morning, we were having breakfast before heading back. I was dipping my bacon into the maple syrup for my French toast, and I noticed several other people doing this too. I'm sure a ton of people do it, and I thought about how the sweet and salty/smoky combination are the reason why this trend of putting bacon into random sweets has lasted for so long. So I'm jumping on both the bacon bandwagon, as well as the cupcake bandwagon, since both sweets and bacon are my downfalls. And thus the concept for maple bacon cupcakes was born.

I typically don't have the patience for making cupcakes, but there is something so photogenic about them and they're so easy to customize them I've found my brain going straight to cupcakes when a new flavor combination comes up.

Adding maple syrup to the batter of the cupcakes gives them this crystallized top, which makes them turn a perfect golden color but also makes them very difficult to get out of the pan if any of the batter overflows and sticks to the edges. Because of this I would say air on the side of caution when filling the liners.

I decided to try a new frosting recipe. I've always liked the cake better than the frosting. I found the frosting from my White Russian Cupcakes recipe was a bit sweet for my usual taste but I couldn't figure out how to thicken the frosting without adding more powdered sugar until I Googled "less sweet butter-cream frosting recipes." I found many recipes that try to be less sweet use a milk/flour base. After fooling around with some ingredients I think I came up with a good alternative. It's sweet, but not too sweet.

My roommate Jill took some mini versions of these cupcakes with her to work and here are some of the testimonials:

"This literally tastes like pancakes and then i'm hit with bacon. I love being hit with bacon."

"Oh my god that just made my knees go weak."

"These are literally the best thing I've ever had."

"This is going in my diary."

I hope you'll enjoy them as much as the team at Navinet did!

Maple Bacon Cupcakes

Print

Ingredients

 Cake

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 ½ cup sugar

¾ cup pure maple syrup

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk

1 teaspoon vanilla

6 strips of cooked bacon, crumbled

Frosting

1 cup milk

5 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon salt

5 tablespoons maple syrup

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 ½ cup powdered sugar

Decoration

Cooked bacon, crumbled

Instructions

Cake

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Line cupcake trays with liners.
3. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth.
4. Add the sugar and maple syrup gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes
5. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
6. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt in a small mixing bowl. Add in four parts, alternating the milk and the vanilla extract, beating well after each addition.
7. Fold in bacon crumbles.
8. Pour batter into cupcake pan until about 2/3 full.
9. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a cake tester inserted into center of the cake comes out clean.
10. Cool cupcakes completely before frosting.

Frosting

1. In a medium saucepan, whisk milk, flour, and salt. Cook over medium heat until the mixture begins to sputter, whisking constantly until it is the consistency of cake batter, about 7 minutes. Add maple syrup and set aside to cool completely.
2. On medium speed beat butter and granulated sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
3. Add cooled saucepan mixture. Beat all ingredients for about 1 minute on high speed, scraping the bowl about halfway through.
4. Add powdered sugar ½ cup at a time until desired consistency.
5. Top cooled cupcakes with frosting and decorate with bacon crumbles.