Custard-Filled Maple & Bacon Cupcakes

For some reason, bacon desserts are all the rage right now. Cafes are selling bacon treats and specialty doughnut shops are sprinkling bacon bits atop maple bars. Oh, and if you have a hankering for chocolate, it’s pretty easy to find a chocolate bar containing bacon.

On the last Monday of every month is this event called Iron Cupcake: SF. It’s a meet-up for bakers and cupcake enthusiasts to either enter their cupcakes in the hopes of winning great prizes, or to taste delicious (and not-so-delicious) cupcakes if you aren’t Martha’s star baker but still want to meet great people. The challenge is to make 48 mini cupcakes following the monthly theme, and prizes are awarded for taste & appearance and creativity. This month the theme of Iron Cupcake: SF was, needless to say, bacon.

My friend Colleen, who is absolutely hilarious and a fantastic baker among other things, told me about this challenge. My eyes lit up when she informed me that the ingredient for March is bacon, as I’m a huge fan of bacon – though my experiences eating bacon have always been paired with eggs or some other typical breakfast item. Never had I tasted bacon in a dessert. After spending quite some time thinking about the ingredients and design of my cupcakes, I decided to make custard-filled maple cupcakes with maple frosting, drizzled with chocolate, and topped with bacon. One might say that simply topping it with bacon is a cop-out, but can you even imagine a mini cupcake (and they’re tiiiny!) with more than a small piece of bacon? Yuck.

After finishing the cupcakes, I was really pressed for time. Bakers are required to be there an hour before the event, and I needed to get there ASAP. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have stashed my cute, perfect cupcakes in the back of my scooter but as they say, hindsight is always 20/20. I really did try to drive as slowly as possible, avoiding all bumps on the terribly paved route to my cupcake contest. Precautions proved futile, however, as I opened the pink boxes to find all 48 cupcakes in a large, messy mass about their containers. All I could think on my sad, pathetic ride back home was “misery, thy name is cupcake.”

With the cupcakes destroyed, Colleen and I attended our first Iron Cupcake event as tasters. It was held at Leland Tea Co. on Bush & Polk in San Francisco and with the $5 entry fee came a cup of black or green tea. We were grouped together with several nice ladies, and the organizers were readily available to help with anything you needed. The prizes were surprisingly great, ranging from acupuncture session certificates, gift cards to local baking shops, and bottles of wine. Even after my disappointing baking disaster, the event motivated me to try my hand at next month’s cupcake challenge: chocolate!

Custard Filling

Yield: about 3 cups

Ingredients:
● 4 egg yolks

● 1/2 cup sugar

● 1/4 cup corn starch

● pinch of salt

● 2 cups milk (I used 2)

● 1 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Whisk egg yolks until smooth in a bowl. Set aside.

2. Combine sugar, corn starch and salt in saucepan over medium heat. Stirring constantly, add milk in a slow, steady stream and cook until mixture thickens and begins to bubble, about 5 minutes. Whisking constantly, slowly pour 1/3 of the milk mixture into whisked egg yolks to prevent yolks from curdling. Pour mixture into remaining milk mixture in saucepan. Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, until mixture comes to a full boil and is thick enough to hold its shape when lifted with a spoon, 2 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in vanilla.

3. Strain mixture through a sieve into a heatproof bowl. Cover with parchment paper and press it directly onto surface to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate until chilled and firm, at least 2 hours and up to 2 days.

4. To fill the cupcakes: Use an apple corer or similar tool to create holes in the center of your cupcakes. Make sure to leave about ¼ of the cupcake base in-tact so cupcake will stay, well, filled! Fill piping bag with chilled custard (a plastic bag with a hole cut in the corner or parchment paper will work also) and fill cupcakes to the top with custard.

Maple Cupcakes

Yield: 2 dozen regular-sized or 72 mini cupcakes

Ingredients:
● 2 3/4 cups flour, sifted
● 1 tbsp baking powder
● 1/4 tsp salt
● 1 tsp ground cinnamon
● 2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temp
● 1 cup brown sugar (Martha’s recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups regular sugar, but my friend Montgomery told me she recently substituted regular sugar for brown sugar when baking a carrot cake, and it turned out fluffier. I figured I’d play it safe and only substitute some of the sugar for my first attempt.)
● 1/2 cup sugar
● 3 eggs
● 1 tsp vanilla extract
● 1 cup milk

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin pans with paper liners or lightly oil.
2. Into a bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar on medium speed until creamy, about 3 minutes.
4. Add the eggs and vanilla, and beat until combined. With the mixer still on medium speed, add the flour mixture in two parts, alternating with the milk and beginning and ending with the flour.
5. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups, filling each ¾ full. Bake until cupcakes are golden and a toothpick inserted in the center of a cupcake comes out clean. Make sure to rotate pan(s) halfway through. 18-20 minutes for regular sized cupcakes, or 10-12 minutes for mini cupcakes. Invert cupcakes onto cooling rack, making sure to turn them right-side-up immediately. Let them cool completely before continuing to next step. (It doesn’t hurt to taste-test, as I did, to make sure they are cooked through and the crust is soft.)

Maple Frosting

Yield: about 2½ cups

Ingredients:
● 3 egg yolks
● 1 cup pure maple syrup
● 2 sticks unsalted butter, cold and cut into small pieces

Directions:
1. Using an electric mixer with the whisk attachment, beat the egg yolks on high speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Set aside.
2. In a saucepan over medium-high heat, bring the maple syrup to a boil and cook until it registers 240 on a candy thermometer, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat. (Martha isn’t joking when she orders you to use a candy thermometer. I don’t have one, and on top of that I have an electric stove. I decided to risk it and as anyone could guess, it was a big failure. There goes the $9 I spent on “best quality” pure maple syrup. I became desperate and didn’t want to waste any more money, so I purchased a $2 bottle of pancake syrup from the corner store – chock full of partially hydrogenated oils. I never said I was proud of myself! The frosting ended up coming out really viscous, or runny to be more frank. If attempting this recipe, I HIGHLY suggest using a candy thermometer.)
3. With the mixer running, slowly pour syrup down the side of the bowl in a slow, steady stream, until completely incorporated, about 1 minute. Continue beating until bowl is just slightly warm to the touch, 4 to 5 minutes. Add butter, one piece at a time, until thoroughly incorporated and the frosting is fluffy, about 4 minutes more.

Bacon topping

Yield: 48 1½”-long strips

Ingredients:
● ½ package bacon

Directions:
1. Cook bacon in a pan until crispy.
2. Place bacon on paper towel to soak up excess fat and cool.
3. Create 1½”-long strips of bacon, taking off fatty parts. Set aside.