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If you know me, than you know I’m not really a football fan. I watch the Super Bowl, but that’s about as far as it goes (and lets face it, I like the commercials and halftime show better than the actual game most years. Sidenote: this year was not one of them, thankyouverymuch Fergie).

Anyways, this year’s challenge for me leading up to the Super Bowl was finding the perfect “mancake” (read as: manly cupcake) to take to my friend’s Super Bowl party.

Mission Successful.

May I present you with… Maple Bacon Super Bowl Cupcakes.

Yes, you heard me correctly. Maple bacon cupcakes (yes, with REAL bacon in them!) filled with a maple icing (which tastes like the maple glaze on maple doughnuts!) and topped with a Vanilla Buttercream decorator icing and chocolate football.

I modified a recipe I found on Vanilla Garlic to make these.

Cupcake Recipe
Makes approximately 16 cupcakes  || 350° for 16-18 minutes

• 1/2 cup + 1 tbsp room temperature butter or margarine
  

  Mmmmm maple bacon cupcakes

• 12 strips of bacon
• 1 tbsp bacon grease (save the grease when you cook the bacon for this recipe!)
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup of bacon (cooked, drained, and crumbled)

Cook the bacon, save the grease and put in the fridge to harden, then mince the bacon (or get the boy to do all this while you deal with the main batter for the cupcakes, which is what I did ;) Beat the butter and cooled bacon grease until it’s light and creamy. Add the brown sugar and maple syrup and mix it well. Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then slowly add to the batter while mixing it. Add the milk. Mix the batter until the ingredients are just combined. Fold in the chopped bacon bits.

Maple Icing/Filling Recipe
**I used this as filling – it’s very liquidy at first, but hardens well if you decide to use it for icing. If I wasn’t decorating these for the Super Bowl, I’d use this as icing and top the cupcake with a curled strip of bacon.

• 2 cups icing sugar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3-4 tsp milk (to taste)
• Pinch of salt (to make it a little less sweet)

Toss everything in a bowl, and blend.

Ta da!

As I mentioned above – I used a vanilla buttercream (with decorator consistency) for the icing, since I was, well, decorating them! I always use the Wilton Buttercream recipe (with an extra tbsp of water) with clear Vanilla Extract. Something I’d like to try is making this icing with maple extract instead of vanilla, and see if that will work as a maple flavored decorator icing (and as flavored as the above recipe); but I didn’t have any maple extract on hand when baking.

You can check out the rest of my photos on Flickr: