Little Bird Bakery

If you happen to follow me on twitter, then you may have seen me mention making maple cupcakes for a party to welcome our friend’s new wife to Canada. Get it? Maple cupcakes.. Canada.. yeah, you get it.

I’d never made any recipes using anything other than sugar for sweetness, so this was a change. Not so much for the cupcakes as for the icing; I never really realized, but icing made with icing sugar has a bit of a crystally texture to it – you can kind of feel the sugar when chewing it. But since there was no sugar, the icing was super smooth and silky.

I also thought it would be neat to make maple candies to top the cupcakes with. I bought maple leaf molds to keep with the theme. Unfortunately it didn’t work out exactly as planned – I’d never made candy before and don’t know my stove too well yet (boiling water is one thing, but I haven’t used it much besides on the high setting), so I think I had the element too hot and ended up rushing it a little. The syrup ended up getting a little crystallized once it cooled (although maybe that’s what it was supposed to do..), and on top of that, it wouldn’t come out the molds. I only managed to get one out intact. But it still tasted good and I figured chunks of it would still work on top!

With the maple leaf shaped maple candy:

And with a non-leaf-shaped chunk of maple candy:

I wasn’t thrilled with the taste of the batter or even the icing when I first made them, but once the cupcakes were baked with the toasted walnuts added, and I guess after the icing sat overnight, they turned out to be pretty tasty! Which was a good thing, because real maple syrup costs A LOT, so it would have been sad if I’d wasted it all!