A couple of weekends ago now we all got together for what has become our monthly stitchy day (with increasing amounts of stitching happening now I might add). This time Nic was visiting from Cardiff so the day was of course spent catching up, checking out wips and the like. Great fun as always, and as is most often the case a day of stitching calls for cupcakes!
This time round I decided to make Maple Pecan cupcakes. These had been on my list of flavour combinations for the RSPCA cupcake day but didn’t quite get done due to a lack of time after making loads of cupcakes toppers and three other flavours of cupcakes (All the pictures for the RSPCA cupcakes can be found here) – as a side note we made almost $400.00 for the RSPCA with a combined effort of three workplaces.
The cupcakes were made according to the maple cupcake recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes (A book I have as of yet not purchased but will rectify that at some point) I borrowed the recipe from another blog. I used a vanilla butter cream instead of a Maple as I ran out of maple syrup!! (the bottle and a half I had in the cupboard was insufficient o_O)
These cupcakes were great the day they were baked but unfortunately really dried out quickly. I want to redo these and try a different recipe. I may even try this one again and tweak things a bit. The maple syrup is the only sugar source in these which is good as I think it cuts down overall on the sugar but I think adding some brown sugar would give a depth of flavour and slight caramelly flavour to them that they would really benefit from. The cupcakes were topped with maple praline pecan nuts (yum!) which were super easy to make.
On to the recipe.
Ingredients
2-3/4 cups plain flour, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened.
2 cups pure maple syrup. – If your lucky enough to live somewhere where your maple syrup comes in grades then use grade B and realise that I am oh so jealous.
3 large eggs, room temp
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line standard or mini muffin tins with paper liners. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.
2.Cream butter until smooth. Add the maple syrup, and beat until combined. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated. Add flour mixture, and mix until combined. Beat in milk and vanilla until combined.
- I added about 3/4 of a cup of chopped pecans to the mix before spooning out the mixture.
3. Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until golden and a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes for standard, 10 to 13 minutes for minis. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes.
Frosting
As I mentioned I just used a vanilla butter cream here … I thought maple would be too overpowering and besides I had run out by the frosting stage.
For my butter cream I usually just use roughly 125g of softened good quality unsalted butter, cream until it goes pale and fluffy then add in icing sugar and up to 1/4 of a cup of cream or milk. I usually just add icing sugar until I am happy with the consistency for piing onto the cupcakes.
Maple Praline Pecans
place a 3/4 – 1cup of maple syrup into a nonstick pan and bring to the boil with ~1cup of pecans. Watch the mixture as you don’t want it to burn. Keep it at a low boil until the syrup starts to crystallise onto the nuts, turn them out onto baking paper and spread out to cool. Once cooled use to decorate the cupcakes you can use them whole or chop them for a praline crumble type thing.
The recipe states that the decorated cupcakes can be stored up to 1 day at room temperature in airtight containers and really they are spot on with this. Any longer and they really dry out, which was a bit disappointing really as I like to take left overs to work but that is up to a day or two after I bake them. So now to find a maple pecan recipe that will last long enough to share :p
Most (of the very few) people that track my blog will already know that a while ago now I made a Whale birthday cake I have uploaded a lot of pictures to do with the construction of the cake to flickr but thought I would post a mosaic here. Next up in my baking adventures is two more decorated birthday cakes (fairy dinosaur garden and an outer space sci-fi cake) oh and of course the maple pecan redoux.
