Pancake Cupcakes With Maple Frosting and Candied Bacon
By: Kita
Published: Thursday, November 4, 2010 - 7:16am

Ingredients




For the Cupcakes
1/2 cup #flour
2 #tea­spoon bak­ing powder
1 #tea­spoon bak­ing soda
1/2 tea­spoon #salt
3/4 tea­spoon #ground ginger
1 stick #or
1/2 cup #unsalted but­ter, softened
1/2 cup #light-brown sugar
2 #large eggs
1 1/4 cups #maple syrup
2 tea­spoons #vanilla extract
1/2 cup #buttermilk
1/2 cup #wal­nuts or pecans, finely chopped
For the Frosting
1 cup of soft­ened, unsalted butter
3 ounces of cream cheese, also softened
2/3 cup of dark-brown sugar (I use golden)
1/4 tea­spoon salt
3/4 cup of maple syrup
3/4 tea­spoon of vanilla extract
1 cup of con­fec­tion­ers’ (icing) sugar
For the bacon
4 #bacon slices
2 #table­spoons maple sugar, divided

Preparation

1 For the Cupcakes 2 Pre­heat your oven 350 degrees F. 3 Sift the flour, bak­ing pow­der, bak­ing soda, salt, and gin­ger together. Set aside. 4 Beat the but­ter and sugar on medium speed in a large bowl until they are fluffy. 5 Add in eggs, syrup and vanilla. Mix until blended. 6 Then mix in the flour mix­ture alter­nat­ing with the but­ter­milk. Do about one-third of the flour and then one-third of the but­ter­milk, and so on. Add the nuts if using. 7 Fill muf­fin or cup­cake tins, either lined or but­tered, accord­ing to your pref­er­ence. Cook for approx­i­mately 20 min­utes or until your tester comes out clean. 8 Cool totally. 9 For the Frosting 10 Beat the soft­ened but­ter, cream cheese, brown sugar and salt in a medium-sized bowl until fluffy. Once again, it is crit­i­cal that your ingre­di­ents be softened. 11 While you keep beat­ing, add both the maple syrup and the vanilla. 12 Slowly add the con­fec­tion­ers’ sugar and grad­u­ally increase the speed to high. Con­tinue beat­ing until the icing is fluffy. 13 Chill the maple-butter frost­ing for one hour before using. 14 For the Bacon 15 Pre­heat oven to 400°F. Line rimmed bak­ing sheet with foil. Place rack in cen­ter of foil. Lay bacon slices on rack. Sprin­kle 1 table­spoon maple sugar evenly over bacon. Bake until sugar is melted, about 8 min­utes. Sprin­kle remain­ing 1 table­spoon sugar over same side of bacon. Bake until bacon is deep brown and glazed, 12 to 14 min­utes longer. Remove from oven. 16 Pre­heat broiler. Broil bacon until sugar on top bub­bles thickly, watch­ing closely to pre­vent burn­ing, 1 to 2 min­utes. Cool bacon com­pletely on rack. Cut into 1/4-inch dice.

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