Bacon! The smell makes my mouth water. What is it that makes bacon so good? Just the right amount of salt, mixed with a little fat, and tender pieces of pork that taste like nothing else. I like mine just a little bit on the side of crispy. Not too crispy, though. My friend Toni told me how to make bacon without totally greasing up my stove. I line a cookie sheet with foil and lay my bacon on top. I cook it for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees. It's perfect... Once the pan cools down, I take the foil and toss it.
For this cupcake, I cooked about 6 slices and made them crispy. Once cooled, I chopped them up. I used a vanilla cake base, but it had real maple syrup in the batter. Oh My Goodness! I could have eaten the cupcakes all by themselves. The maple made the cake so moist and taste quite rich. Yum!
The cupcakes had blueberries and bacon in the batter. Once I put the batter into the pan, I added a couple of blueberries to the top of each one. They baked up wonderfully! They also smelled divinely.
While they were cooking I made Cream Cheese Frosting with Maple Syrup. It was sooooo good! Believe me, I was skeptical about bacon and blueberries in a cupcake. But I'm a convert!
I used a piece of bacon and crumbled it on top of the cupcakes.
THE VERDICT: These were fantastic! While Roger, Zane, Katie, and Sam were on their mission trip, Zack, Nate, and I flew up to Ohio to visit our friends and pick up a car. I wanted to take them some cupcakes, so I got a pretty cupcake box from Hobby Lobby. I held 6 cupcakes. I was able to fly them all the way to Ohio. I guess people take baked goods through security more than I realized. We had no trouble. We delivered them to our friends and they liked them...a lot! I've already made these again...as mini-cupcakes. They're awesome.
