Salty, sweet and completely irresistible, these maple bacon cupcakes are totally addictive and the perfect treat.
What makes these cupcakes so addictive? Let’s break it down. The cupcakes are a vanilla cake, absolutely loaded with candied bacon. And the frosting? This maple frosting has a soul warming amount of maple syrup.
We’re not using american buttercream here, today we’re using ermine (flour) buttercream – which allows us to add a whole lot more maple syrup to the frosting, while still keeping a nice thick smooth consistency. More maple syrup = more flavour. Trust me, ermine frosting is worth the effort.
Check out my nifty tips below to make baking these cupcakes an easy breeze.
Nifty Tips
Measure Twice, cook once
As the saying goes, if cooking is an art, then baking is a science. There’s nothing more frustrating than investing your time in the kitchen, only for the final product to be less than expected – we’ve all been there!
The first step on the path to baking success is to measure your ingredients accurately. To help you with this, all my ingredients are shown in grams. I highly recommend you invest in a set of kitchen scales, your baking will become immensely more consistent with this one small purchase.
The second step is a simple one. Every time you put something in the oven, set a timer. Its so easy to put something in the oven and forget to either:
- look at the clock,
- or check it again after a set amount of time.
Take the human error out of the equation and the mental load off your shoulders. Just set that damn timer on your phone.
Break it down
There is a lot of elements going on here – 3 in total. I find the easiest way to tackle a complex bake like this is to break it down, and prepare some elements ahead. For example, when making these cupcakes, I split the work over 2 days.
- Day 1: Make the candied bacon, and base for the ermine frosting (30minutes)
- Day 2: Bake the cupcakes and frosting (30 minutes prep time)
I find taking a long game approach helps make the kitchen a much calmer place
On that note...
These cupcakes freeze really well! If you’re planning these for a party I’d highly recommend baking at least the cupcake and candied bacon the week before and popping them both in the freezer.
Either move them from the freezer to the fridge the night before, or let them sit on the kitchen counter for 30 minutes to thaw before decorating.
This one small hack makes throwing a party so much more enjoyable. You get to actually spend time in the moment, rather than stressing over every little detail in the lead up to that special occasion.
Maple Bacon Cupcakes
Equipment
- oven & stove
- electric beaters
- 2 x muffin tins
- baking tray & oven proof ire rack
- saucepan
Ingredients
Candied Bacon
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 200 grams middle cut bacon
Bacon Cupcakes
- 150 grams flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 125 grams butter softened
- 50 grams caster sugar
- 50 grams brown sugar
- 2 eggs room temperature
- 1 & 1/2 tablespoon milk room temperature
Maple Syrup Ermine Frosting
- 50 grams flour softened
- 50 grams caster sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 150 grams maple syrup
- 125 ml milk
- 225 grams butter
Instructions
Candied Bacon
- Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
- Place a wire baking rack onto a baking tray that has been lined with tin foil. (Don't skip the tin foil, it will help immensely in the clean up).
- Place sugar on a plate and dip the bacon into the sugar. Make sure the sugar covers both sides of the bacon.
- Transfer the bacon to the wire baking rack, and sprinkle remaining sugar over the top of the bacon
- Bake in oven for ~10 minutes, or until sugar has completely melted. Take the tray out of the oven and flip the bacon. Return to the oven for a further 10 minutes (or until the bacon has darkened in colour).
Bacon Cupcakes
- Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Prepare your muffin tray by lining each hole a patty pans and set aside.
- Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl, then whisk the dry ingredients to combine and set the bowl aside.⠀
- In a second bowl, cream together butter, caster sugar and brown sugar, using an electric mixer.
- Add the eggs one at a time to butter/sugar mixture, mixing well after each addition. If you notice the batter appears to split, add a little flour and continue mixing. This should help it should come back together.
- Add the milk to batter and continue mixing until combined.
- Make a small well in the bowl of dry ingredients, and pour wet ingredients into the bowl. Using a spoon gently fold mixture until combined.
- Gently fold in 100 grams of candied bacon
- Spoon the batter into your prepared muffin tins, and bake in oven for around 22 minutes. You'll know the cupcakes are cooked when a skewer can be inserted into the cakes and comes out clean.Allow the cupcakes to cool completely before adding the frosting.
Maple Ermine Frosting
- Place the flour, sugar & salt in a saucepan on the stove over medium heat and stir with a whisk until the flour toasts slightly.
- Stir through the maple syrup. Then add milk a little at a time, stirring continuously with your whisk to prevent the mixture from burning at the bottom of the saucepan. Using a whisk will minimise any lumps forming.
- Once the mixture is thick and goopy (like pudding), remove the saucepan from the heat, and transfer the mixture to a heat-proof container and allow it to cool completely. You can put this container in the fridge or freezer to speed up the cooling process, but make sure the mixture is room temperature before adding it to the butter.
- Once the maple mixture has cooled. Place your softened butter in a bowl and whip it up using an electric mixer until it's light and fluffy.
- Add the maple mixture to the whipped butter, 1 table spoon at a time, mixing well after each addition. Make sure each tablespoon of the maple mixture is incorporated before adding the next tablespoon.
- Once all the maple mixture and butter is combined, transfer the buttercream to a piping bag and pipe onto your cooled cupcakes. For these cupcakes, I've used a closed star Wilton 1B piping tip.
- Decorate your cupcakes with the remaining candied bacon.
How much flour for the Ermine?
Hi Amy, thanks for reaching out. You’ll need 50 grams of flour to in the ermine frosting. I’ve updated the recipe to include this.
Thanks so much for replying! Admittedly I tried to figure it out on my own based on ratios from a basic ermine recipe, and I came up with 40g, so not too far off. The frosting turned out great, and it was a definite crowd pleaser. I used it to top spice cupcakes.