Saturday, September 26, 2009

You know you want to try these

Several months ago we joked with one of my co-workers that we were going to find him a cake with bacon for his birthday. A couple of months after that his birthday rolled around and we were on the hunt for something including bacon to bring in for him. We found a bakery near our office that made a bacon maple cupcake. They were expensive but we thought we'd get a couple just for kicks. One of my other co-workers made the brilliant suggestion that we should just make bacon maple cupcakes instead of buying them. I'm not one to shy away from a baking challenge so when she found a recipe for the cupcakes online I promptly volunteered to make them.
The process began with cooking up about a pound of bacon so that I could save the drippings and then chop up the bacon. Both would go into the cupcakes.
This is how the cupcakes begin. Two sticks of butter and two tablespoons of hardened bacon drippings. This is going to be good!

Once the butter and bacon drippings are whipped together, you add other standard cupcake batter ingredients and some good quality maple syrup. The more I think about it, if you take out the bacon drippings, this batter would be a really good basic cupcake. Once the ingredients are all mixed together you add in all the bacon bits and stir together.

Once you bake the cupcakes you end up with these.

Hands down the best part of these was the frosting! Butter, powdered sugar and good quality maple syrup. Amazing! I'll be keeping the frosting recipe around for a long time. Frost the cupcakes and sprinkle with a little sea salt and raw sugar.
Aren't they beautiful?

These were a huge hit at the office. I was almost afraid to even taste them but they were surprisingly good. The cake wasn't overly sweet (almost like a cornbread) and the bacon added a nice touch of savory. These were pretty dense and only a few people were able to eat an entire cupcake in one sitting. I made these back in July and people are still talking about them. They were declared to be the best birthday present my co-worker had ever gotten. They made people do little dances of joy. They made jaws drop in disbelief.

2 comments:

michelle said...

whoa! it sounds weird at first, but if you think about it, it's kinda like taking a pancake, bacon and syrup and wrapping it up all into one neat little package. yum! and that frosting sounds amazing...might need that recipe from you!

Kelly said...

As one who lauded the bacon-maple-baked-good combo a year or so ago, I approve this message. And suggest you bake a mini-batch for our "date" this Friday. :-)