BEST OF TDB | Test Kitchen – Maple French Toast & Bacon Cupcakes…

We are away on vacation until July 12th.  Until then, please enjoy these selected “Best Of” posts.  This was originally published 9/2/2009.

Yesterday’s “Better with Bacon” featured recipe, the Maple French Toast & Bacon Cupcake, came from the “Food Network Magazine” and provided yet another take on what is becoming a trend in the dessert world – sweet & savory desserts featuring bacon!

When I was a kid, I used to love to bake: Nestle Tollhouse Cookies, Skywalker Crunchies (I know…nerd), cakes, brownies, etc.  I need to say upfront that it has been quite some time since I actually baked anything but this looked so good that I had to try.

What I didn’t expect was the amount of time it took to make these.  The recipe said 40 minutes, but turns out that was just the baking time.  I started this project at 9:15 pm and didn’t finish until 11:30 pm.  Granted, my lack of current experience may have hindered me, but making stuff from scratch like this takes a while (that did also include clean up as the cupcakes were in the oven).

So when I start to make anything, I like to have all the ingredients pulled:

Seriously, look at all this stuff.  Usually it’s just a box of mix, eggs and oil…this is when it hit me, you may have bitten off a little more than you can chew right out of the gate.

The only variation I had from the original recipe was using corn starch instead of potato starch.  I ran around to all the markets around my house and NO ONE carried potato starch.

So we started out with getting all the dry ingredients together:

Right off the bat, the cinnamon and nutmeg hit you.  It’s got a good aroma.

Then, time for the “wet” ingredients.  You should have seen me trying to separate the egg whites.  For a guy who watches as much “Food Network” as I do, you think I could have handled that one…but no.

Here’s the completed batter.  I made a mistake here and whipped the dry ingredients in instead of a nice, slow mix.  I should have changed the head on the Kitchenaid.  My batter really was overworked at this point, but got to keep pressing through.

Now the good stuff…the bacon…

Good, thick sliced smoked bacon from breakfast on Sunday.  I used only five strips and it turned out to be plenty.  Took my time and got all these bits folded in…

Looks like we’re ready for the oven.

After 40 (yes 40) minutes at 325,  presto…

The Maple French Toast & Bacon Cupcake!

The frosting was a cream cheese base with maple syrup and cinnamon.  I screwed this up to and didn’t get enough air into it, so the frosting had this gloopy sort of consistency you can see in the photo.

I thought I had enough batter in each cup, but looks like I could have really filled them up more, as the cake really didn’t rise much.

The cake itself was a little dense.  I blame my overworking the batter for that.

So how did it taste?

Pretty good if I don’t say so myself.

You can really taste the cinnamon and nutmeg.  The bacon actually was pretty even throughout the cake and I had some in every bite.  The frosting provided the perfect level of sweetness to contrast the smoky taste of the bacon and the maple really works with the spice.  My co-workers all seemed to agree as the plate I brought to work the next morning was woofed down.  So even with all the problems I had, that was a good sign.

Would I make again?  I don’t know.  They were good, but really time consuming.  I am thinking of maybe using a simple spice cake mix and seeing how that plays out.

If you get the time, try it.  I think you’ll like it!