Cupcake Recipe: Maple Bacon Cupcakes and Maple Icing Using #TxBacon

In your wildest dreams would you ever have thought to combine a cupcake with bacon? Couple that with some sea salt and turbinado raw cane sugar sprinkled over top a maple butter icing and you have one of the smoothest cupcakes you’ve tasted.

This is delicious.

This is pretty simple.

This is gourmet.

We made a trip to H-E-B grocery store this past weekend to grab the @PetitJeanMeats bacon and other cupcake ingredients. Do you have H-E-B grocery stores in your area? There are many stores in South and Central Texas, and we are slowly getting a few here in North Texas. Very nice stores.

Ingredients:

For the Cupcakes:

• 4 1/2 T butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 T bacon drippings
• 1 egg
• 5 T brown sugar
• 4  T maple syrup
• 1 1/4 c self rising flour
• 1 t baking soda
• 1/2 t baking powder
• pinch of kosher salt
• 1/4 c milk
• 6 strips of bacon (half a cup once cooked and minced)
• extra bacon pieces for garnish
• turbinado raw cane sugar for garnish
• sea salt for garnish

For the Icing:

• 4 T butter, at room temp
• 2 T maple syrup
• 1 c powdered sugar

Cook up your bacon.

Save some of the bacon drippings/grease. You’re going to use this in your cupcake batter. Let it firm up like pictured below. (Pop it in the fridge if need be.)

Mix together your butter, bacon drippings and bacon pieces.

I used a standing mixer on a medium speed for about 30-45 seconds.

Add the brown sugar and maple syrup.

Mix on medium until well combine.

Add the egg.

Combine well.

Now, sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and pinch of kosher salt.

Add half of the flour mixture to the batter.

Mix on medium and combine well.

Add half the milk and mix until combine.

Repeat the last two steps adding the remaining flour mixture and then the remaining milk.

Your batter will now look like this:

Add batter to lined cupcake tins.

I overfilled my tins. Only fill them half full.

You should be able to get 12 cupcakes from one batch of batter.

Pop them in a 350 degree oven and bake for about 18 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Once done, let them cool.

Once the cupcakes are cool, start the icing.

Mix the butter and maple sugar together on a high speed until well combined.

Add the powdered sugar and mix again on high until creamy smooth.

This is one of the easiest icing recipes I’ve ever made.

Pipe icing onto each cupcake.

If you’re wanting to indulge each cupcake in as much icing as I did, you’re going to need to triple the icing recipe.

Sprinkle the tops with some sea salt and raw turbinado sugar on top.

Top the icing with a small piece of bacon and you’re done.

A few drawbacks- the cupcake consistency, once baked, is very light. They crumbled easily and were a bit delicate once cooked. This kind of frustrated my kids. To prevent crumbling only fill the cupcake tins half full. I overfilled mine. Also, the recipe only makes one dozen (if you fill the tins half full). Doubling the recipe is required for feeding a crowd. The icing recipe would need to be tripled to ice each cupcake as I did in the photographs. That being said, this is an AMAZING icing recipe. I loved the consistency. I followed this cupcake and icing recipe.

 

I do want to share one last picture with you. On our way home from H-E-B there were jets in the sky writing messages. My thirteen year old snapped a few pictures for me. I thought this was a perfect message to share with a #TxBacon campaign.

 

For more delicious #TxBacon recipes follow @PetitJeanMeats on Twitter and on Facebook. Take at look at our entire shopping trip by checking out all of my shopping photos over on Google+.   Love #TxBacon? Check out more Petit Jean Meats products over on their website.

This shop has been part of a social shopper insights study for #CBias and #SocialFabric. All opinions stated are my own.