Dark Chocolate Maple Bacon Cupcakes

Ingredients

dark chocolate cake mix (I used Pillsbury)
1 1/3 cups water
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs 2 eggs, 1 egg white

nutmeg

cinnamon

25 paper cupcake liner cups

vegetable spray

2 2/3 cups 3 1/3 cups confectioner sugar

3 tablespoons 2 % milk

1/4 teaspoon maple abstract 4 tablespoon low-fat maple syrup

4 oz bacon

Pre-heat oven to 350º

Cupcakes/Bacon:

Follow cake directions to make batter and pour batter into 24 liner cups in either a muffin tin or laid out on a cookie sheet.  Bake as directed on mix box. 

While the cupcakes bake, heat up a medium frying pan (prepared with a vegetable spray like PAM) on medium heat.  While it heats up lay bacon strips horizontally and slice the bacon vertically into 1/2 inch strips.  Place bacon strips into heated pan and cook 5 minutes, draining oil mid-may, until browned and crisp-not burnt.  Place cooked bacon onto paper towels to soak up any excess oil/fat and to dry up. After cupcakes have baked, allow to cool and prepare icing. 

In a medium bowl, combine the sugar and the milk and mix until desired consistency is achieved (you want it thick enough to keep from running of the cupcake but not so thick it rips a moist cupcake.)  I made mine thick enough to spread and thin enough to drizzle.  If you need to thicken your icing, add sugar.  To thin it out, add milk.  When satisfied with thickness, add syrup and mix.

Spoon icing evenly over half of the top of each cupcake (I used 1 soup-spoonful of icing per cupcake) and let it spread out on its own.  For the presentation-minded, let 1 or 2 high held spoonfuls drip in a light stream over all the cupcakes in a haphazard design.

Notes:

I pieced this together from different recipes and tweaked ‘em.   I changed measurements from said recipes and added or swapped items. (Like I my Gristedes has maple extract.)

Tweaks:

Substituted a 3^rd egg with an egg white and added nutmeg and cinnamon to cake mix

Increased the sugar amount and substituted the maple extract with maple syrup for the icing.

Cheats:

My mother and my Aunt Georgia used to laugh at me when I used to say that I wanted to make a cake from scratch.  They would always say “Why would you want to do that when a mix already perfected it?”  Totally legit cheat.

Verdict: Success

What would I change? 

I would do a cake frosting (like for a cake-cake) as opposed to the icing that I made here that is more suited for my mom’s cut-out cookies at Christmas.


This dessert is neighbor-worthy and approved.



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