Baked Sunday Mornings: Maple Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

This week's recipe for Baked Sunday Mornings is "Maple Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting." One of the simpler recipes from Baked Explorations, you make the batter by creaming together butter and shortening, adding in maple syrup (I used grade B), adding in a egg and three egg yolks, and then alternately adding dry ingredients (four, baking powder, salt) and milk. At the end, you fold in a cup of toasted, chopped walnuts. There is a lot of liquid in this recipe. It calls for an entire pint of maple syrup and a one and one-quarter cup of milk, along with the eggs. The batter was very thin, so much so that I kept checking the recipe to make sure that I hadn't measured something incorrectly. The recipe says it yields two dozen cupcakes, but I got 26.

The cupcakes come out golden brown. You top them with a delicious, smooth frosting made from cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and maple syrup. There are only two tablespoons of maple syrup in the frosting, and the maple flavor was hard to detect.

I'm not sure I can give a fair critique of these cupcakes. The cupcake itself is very moist and tender, and I thought that the walnuts added some terrific taste and texture (I was also pleasantly surprised that the walnuts remained evenly distributed through the cupcakes and didn't just sink to the bottom, given how thin the batter was). The frosting is fabulous.

The thing is, I didn't love the maple flavor of the cupcake. I enjoy a little maple syrup on pancakes and waffles as much as the next person, but I like my maple syrup in moderation; I have never been a fan of those leaf-shaped maple candies that are made from boiled down maple syrup. These cupcakes are pretty darn maple-y. The upside to that is that tasters who really like maple loved the cupcakes. As for me and Tom, not so much. But I can definitely appreciate that this is a good maple cupcake.

Recipe: "Maple Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting," from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.