French toast-inspired cupcakes

For a while I have been thinking about the idea of doing a play on french toast, or pancakes with bacon, banana and maple syrup by turning that into a cupcake. I love those flavours, and think they work really well together, so decided to give it a go.

I adapted a recipe from my favourite cupcake book, The Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook. I seriously love this cookbook.

I took the Crabapple Bakery banana cupcake recipe and adapted it slightly by substituting some of the milk for maple syrup, and some of the white sugar for brown sugar. I also added some cooked bacon. The result was a caramel/maple banana cupcake, quite delicious. I didn't think you could really taste the bacon, although this had mixed reviews from my workmates (who did the taste testing for me).

I made a brown sugar buttercream frosting. Again I substituted the milk for maple syrup and some of the icing sugar for the brown sugar.

Overall, I think this experiment was a success (my workmates agreed). What would I do differently though? The cupcakes for my liking were a bit sweet. I think the frosting was too sweet, and I don't think the bacon flavour was strong enough. To fix that, I think the cupcakes needed some more salt, probably in the frosting. I think a salted caramel frosting would have been better suited. I'll try that next time.