I have discovered that gluten-free/sugar free baking is A LOT of trial and error with few successes. I do believe I have finally come up with a ratio for the flour/sugar for cakes and success is becoming more and more popular. Cookies, however, still allude me.

So for our 2nd cupcake (as you need 4 for cupcake wars) we attempted a bacon maple one. Maple to me just screams fall coming and who doesn’t love bacon? We are going to tie it in to Harry Potter with a decoration of a golden snitch with maple flavored chocolate in the middle. We have high expectations to be able to do all this in 45 minutes don’t we? Lets just say… it didn’t happen, but we are getting faster.

For this recipe, we adapted it from Will Cook For Smiles: Maple Bacon Cupcake recipe and from Natasha’s Kitchen: Swiss Meringue Buttercream

As I mentioned before… errors. The apple streusel cupcakes were good the first time we made them. The topping not so much, but at least the cupcakes turned out. These, well… didn’t. Neither the frosting nor the cupcake turned out tasty. So we had to attempt this recipe in two sessions.
Our first attempt.
The cupcake… Moist, but no flavor. We decided that the cake recipe was good and probably delicious as it is written, but we needed to make some more changes to make it gluten free with low sugar.
The frosting… well our first frosting tasted like sheer butter, we dumped it. The second frosting tasted like chemicals. We tried to follow the recipe just like it was written and substituting Stevia for the sugar. No matter what we did, the frosting was gross. In the end, we frosted the cupcakes for pictures and decided to go back to the drawing board.
The decorations… now my best friend is amazing at drawing. Me not so much, I can take photos and edit in Photoshop, but to hand draw is another story. So she is in charge of decorations and decided to make a snitch out of chocolate. I think she did a great job for our first attempt. The wings to me looked better than anything I could do and she got the chocolate into a ball, then cracked it. But it was a ball for a second.
Times and other things… We realized from our Apple streusel attempt, one needs to work on batter and the other on frosting to make things go faster or we would never get done in the 45 minute time limit. This time we were actually ready to frost in 45 minutes! If we hadn’t had to throw out the buttercream, we might have at least had a cupcake. Decorations not so much done in that time, but we are pretty proud of how quick we did get the baking done.

Our second attempt.
The cupcake… Was delicious. Since the last time the cake was moist but no flavor, we decided we needed to add more bacon and more maple. The original recipe calls for maple extract as optional, it is not. They needed that extra oomph. We also omitted the vegetable oil called for in the original recipe and went with only bacon grease. It did make the cupcakes a little bit more dense but not enough that they were not delicious.
The frosting… was delicious the first day. Was not good the next day on the left over cupcakes. After watching Cake Wars, I saw a lot of their American butter-creams did not turn out. The judges said it tasted like butter or had a bad after taste and that was with regular sugar. All the bakers then switched to Swiss buttercream, so I thought why not. Ran it by my bestie and she also suggested we use the Stevia/Sugar mix, which we did. We halved the original recipe but did add a 1/4 cup more Stevia than sugar called for. It was good first go around, which we both thought was amazing. However, this really needs to be done same day you plan on using it. The next day I wanted one for breakfast (don’t judge) and it tasted pretty chemical.
The decorations… we didn’t do. we have decided to dedicate an entire session to working on these alone.
Times and other things… We both had had stressful days at work when we did our second session. Much venting and bestie time happened. We completely didn’t try to rush but get something delicious to eat, which we both devoured. So it took a good 90 minutes to get these to serve. We didn’t care, it was a good time had by all.

Next week: An attempt at Rice Crispy Treats

Maple Bacon Cupcakes with Swiss Meringue Buttercream

Ingredients

• Cupcakes
  • 4 egg whites, room temperature
  • 1 1/2 cup Stevia (my favorite sugar substitute)
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup bacon grease (made from cooking the bacon)
  • 1 pound of bacon
  • 2 Tbsp maple syrup
  • 2 cups of Gluten-Free all purpose flour
  • 1 tsp Gluten-Free baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • 1 cup buttermilk
  • 1 tsp maple extract
• Frosting
  • 3 large egg whites
  • 1 1/4 cup Stevia/Sugar blend
  • 1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) butter
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/8 tsp sea salt

Instructions

• Cupcakes
  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees
  • Line pan with cupcake liners or spray
  • Fry the bacon in a pan. Measure out a 1/2 cup of bacon grease, discard the rest of the grease. Crumble up the bacon and set aside.
  • Sift flour, baking soda, salt and baking powder together and set aside.
  • Combine bacon grease, vanilla extract, maple syrup and maple extract
  • In a bowl of an electric mixer (using paddle attachment) or a large bowl with a hand mixer, beat egg whites for about 30 seconds and slowly start adding in the sugar. Beat for 2 – 3 minutes until white and fluffy.
  • Pour in oil mixture slowly while still beating eggs on medium speed
  • Alternating, add flour mixture and buttermilk to batter (2 times flour, 2 times milk). Mix until just combined, scrape sides and then mix until everything is incorporated.
  • Take 3/4 of crumbled bacon and put into batter. Mix just until bacon has been incorporated into batter. The rest will go to garnish after frosted.
  • Fill cupcake liners 2/3rds full (makes about 16 – 18 cupcakes)
  • Bake for 18 – 22 minutes or toothpick comes out clean.
• Frosting:
  • Note: These instructions use a double broiler, I don’t have a fancy metal bowl that comes with an electric mixer. Both my electric mixer and my double broiler are probably 30 years old, but still work great. So if you like to use your electric mixer bowl and put it on top of a pot to keep it all in one thing, that works too.
  • In a double broiler heat up water to a simmer. Wash the top pan of the double broiler right before using to ensure no grease is there.
  • Add the eggs and sugar to the top pan of broiler and whisk together. Place pan on top of the bottom pan. Whisk constantly until the mixture reaches 160 degrees (takes about 4 minutes). Sugar should be fully dissolved and mixture will fell hot to the touch.
  • Take mixture and pour into bowl of electric mixer or large bowl. Beat with whisk attachment on medium-high for 15 – 20 minutes (it sucks with a hand mixer, but if that’s all you got, you can do it. I did in college) or until stiff glossy peaks form and the bottom of the bowl feels room temperature.
  • If you have a paddle attachment, switch to that, or if you don’t. Change from whisk to normal beaters on what you are using. Start adding the butter 1 Tbsp at a time as fast as it is absorbed by the meringue.
  • Once the butter is in scrape down the sides and continue beating until it reaches a thick whipped consistency (about 3 minutes)
  • Add vanilla extract and sea salt and mix until incorporated.

Cupcake Wars Theme: Harry Potter

So… Cupcake Wars…. When we decided to do this, I started looking up anything and everything about the show. I then came to realize that more than likely they knew the theme and mystery ingredients ahead of the show. Practice was happening. We decided if they get to practice, we get to practice.

Also like the show, we will have a theme to go with our “show day”. We also plan on having 3 – 4 judges (family and friends) to give us feedback on our cupcakes and finishing everything in those crazy time limits!
Our theme for our cupcake wars this time is… Harry Potter. I love Harry Potter and she likes Harry Potter, so we are going for it. In case anyone is wondering I’m a Gryffindor and she is a Hufflepuff.

Since we are doing Harry Potter we are going with a fall feel. Apples work great for that and decided to try an Apple Streusel Cupcake. I realize now, I probably should have taken more pictures… but hindsight is 20/20. I will in the future, but probably not for a few posts.

We started out thinking we had everything. Started our time and came to realize… we didn’t… we didn’t have a lot of the stuff we needed, including cupcake pans. So off to the store we went. 20 minutes later… we were back and decided we were going to start the time over again.
In my defense on the cupcake pans… I have jumbo, I have muffin top, I have mini, I have Easter and Halloween, who would have thought I lost my regular pans.

Now, the recipe we used is adapted from the Joy of Baking Website and can be found here. We also thought, psh… 45 minutes is plenty of time to make a batch of cupcakes. We took our time, we chatted, we worked on the batter together and finally looked at the clock and realized… OMG it’s been 40 minutes and we haven’t even gotten the cupcakes in the oven. These things need to bake for at least 20 minutes. Yup, we failed in time and realized next time one has to do the topping and the other has to do the batter.

The results:
The cupcake itself was delicious. Moist and full of apples. The streusel topping however tasted of gluten free flour, as what happens so much in gluten free baking. You had to spit it out, it was so gross. We do not have that perfected yet, so I’m leaving that off the recipe below. But if you are looking for a great apple cupcake, this is wonderful.

Apple Cupcakes

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup All Purpose Gluten-Free Flour
• 1 teaspoon Gluten-Free baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 3/4 cup Stevia (this is the sugar substitute I like, it seems to work the best in baking)
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup soy milk (can use regular, I am lactose intolerant and like soy as my substitute)
• 2 large firm apples (I use Gala, but any work)

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Line cupcake pan with cupcake liners (makes about 15 – 18 cupcakes)
• In a small bowl whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
• Cut apples into tiny bite size cubes. Set aside.
• In the bowl of an electric mixer (using paddle attachment) or a large bowl and hand mixer, beat butter until creamy smooth (about 2 minutes).
• Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy.
• Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until incorporated
• Take the flour mixture and the milk and alternate between the to starting and ending with the flour mixture. (3 flour and 2 milk), beat after each addition until just incorporated
• Fold in apples until they are all mixed into the batter.
• Take batter and fill cupcake liners until they are 2/3rds full.
• Bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Due to the apples inside the batter, this does take longer than normal cupcakes.
• Enjoy.

Tune in next week… as we plan on doing Bacon Maple.