My husband's aunt turned 80 years beautiful this month. Guess what I brought to the party?
My sister-in-law and I each brought a batch of cupcakes for the guests. Hers were great - red velvet with cream cheese frosting and what I think might have been a strawberry cheesecake cupcake (I didn't get to taste that one). I had heard from our aunt that maple and cream cheese are her favorite flavors. I tackled the maple.
What I ended up with was a walnut cinnamon cake filled with a maple pie filling, frosted with a maple almond butter frosting, topped with lightly toasted walnuts and a fondant maple leaf. Here's the long road that got me to that end.
I practiced several recipes in the two or three weeks leading up to the party. I tested out at least four cake recipes and four frosting recipes. I also made a maple filling using a recipe that fills a maple tart from
BHG's recent Fall Baking issue. This filing is fabulous. I want to try making the tart.
Cakes:
- Butter cake - too dense and dry
- Doctored yellow cake mix - too sweet
- Walnut cake made with crushed walnuts - too whole wheat tasting
- Martha Stewart's Walnut cake - the winner!
Frostings:
- Maple cream cheese frosting - too loose
- Brown sugar maple frosting - too brown sugary
- Frosting using my recipe for maple filling as the base - not as maple tasting as I wanted
- Maple French buttercream from Martha Stewart - the winner again! Go Martha!
One of the things I realized as I tested out recipes was that I kept looking for the maple flavor you find in a maple doughnut. The recipes using pure maple syrup instead of maple flavoring are a whole different ball game. I got over my desire for the fake flavor that I know and love and went with recipes using pure maple syrup. They were just better recipes. Here is one of my test batches. I decorated with a brown sugar cookie in the shape of a maple leaf.
So here's where the trouble starts: when I went to use my carefully chosen recipes for the big day, my buttercream didn't turn out. The only thing I did differently was double the recipe. I don't know what happened. It just wasn't my day I guess. The frosting was way too loose and wouldn't firm up for anything.
In a panic, and after a few tears, I pulled out the other frostings I had practiced on earlier that week. I had them in the freezer. I used both the brown sugar maple frosting and the one I made up out of my filling. I had also purchased some gold sugar for dusting and made fondant maple leafs to decorate. Here are the finished cakes.
They were so beautiful; that's why what happened next was so heartbreaking. We transported the cupcakes about 5 or 6 hours and when we went to put them in my mother-in-law's freezer for the next day we found that the frostings had melted. The cupcakes were globby messes.
There I was away from kitchen and all of my tools with my finished product in shambles. It was hard to sleep that night. The next day I went to four different stores looking for replacement frosting and decorating ingredients. I was praying that I would be able to salvage the cakes. I ended up buying extra baking cups in case I had to transfer the cakes to cups that weren't covered with melty frosting, plastic piping tips, a bag of walnuts, and for the frosting, maple almond butter, maple flavoring, butter and powdered sugar. I was also hoping to salvage my fondant maple leaves.
When I got back to my mother-in-law's house I painstakingly scraped off all of the melty frosting - even from the pretty baking cups. I also cleaned the fondant leaves. I was able to salvage it all. Whew!
I lightly toasted my walnuts and went to work on my frosting. Here is the recipe I made up:
Maple Almond Butter Frosting:
1 cup unsalted butter
1/3 cup maple almond butter
1/2 tsp maple flavoring
4 cups powdered sugar
1 - 2 tbsp milk or cream
I ended up liking this frosting more than Martha Stewart's. Here's my finished cupcakes again.
They were delicious. I will definitely do this recipe again. I'll take a shorter route next time though.
