These maple bacon cupcakes are seriously amazing. Soft Maple cupcakes filled with candied bacon, topped with a soft maple buttercream and another slice of candied bacon!
When we were eating our way around the worlds of Epcot (remember the lemon scones from England?) I wasn’t planning on getting anything in America, after all we were eating a LOT of food and why hit up my OWN country? I can get American food anytime anyplace, right?
Then I looked at the menu! BACON CUPCAKE??? I hadn’t really gotten into the whole maple bacon craze at this point (obviously I have now), but I had to at least TRY it, right? WELL the cupcake itself was NOT very good, IMO. Too dense for a cupcake, like I couldn’t even finish HALF of one it was that heavy, more like a dense muffin than a cupcake. But the Maple FROSTING was AMAZING!
ANYWAY these babies went on the list of recipes to recreate! I was MOST excited about perfecting the Maple icing, (and it’s GOOD) but I also wanted to improve upon the cupcake itself. I didn’t just want to improve it, I wanted it to actually taste GOOD!
So I’m using the Vanilla cake recipe I always use for cupcakes and adding the Maple flavoring and Bacon (I also use this recipe for these caramel spider cupcakes). BUT you can take your favorite vanilla or butter cupcake and add maple extract to it and get the same results – even a box mix if that’s what you prefer.
Now for the bacon – you can go either way – classic regular bacon cut up and placed in to the cupcake OOOORRRRR candied bacon… You’ll get more of a sweet/salty combo with the plain bacon, but I’m all about my sweets being sweet so I prefer the candied bacon – ESP for the bacon slice on top!
So??? are they any good? I seriously can NOT stop eating them! Like AMAZING… They smell divine, like the best breakfast ever, and they taste even better. I did NOT expect to like them! I ended up making 4 dozen and I swear I’ve eaten half of them myself. The kids don’t love them, but the adults all do!
Maple Bacon Cupcake Recipe
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If you love Disney Copycat Recipes or Disney film based Recipes you’ll love these other recipes
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Play the video below to see the full video – Or play the short video in the recipe (if on desktop, it should be autoplaying for you)
Maple Bacon Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 2 1/3 C cake flour add 2 Tbsp and 1 tsp for high altitude
- 1 1/2 C granulated sugar minus 1 1/2 Tbsp for high altitude
- 2 1/3 tsp baking powder minus 1/2 tsp for high altitude
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 6 Tbsp butter softened
- 3 lrg eggs room temperature
- 1/2 C greek yogurt or sour cream
- 6 Tbsp Mayonnaise
- 1 Tbsp vanilla
- 1 tsp maple extract
- 1 cup whole milk
- 8 sliced candied bacon diced
- Cream cheese maple frosting
- 8 slices candied bacon cut into 3rds for decoration
Instructions
- preheat oven to 350 F (375 F for high altitude)
- In a medium-sized mixing bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, mix together cake flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Add butter and mix on medium-low speed until you end up with a fine crumb
- In a small mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, yogurt, mayo, vanilla and maple extract until smooth.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and beat on medium speed until just combined.
- Slowly add milk and mix on low speed until just combined. The batter will be wet
- Fold in half the diced candied bacon
- scoop into cupcake tins and sprinkle the rest of the bacon on top
- bake 14-18 mins
- let cool them frost and enjoy!
Video
Nutrition
Julia fee
Would like to make them what are candied bacon and can bacon be left out for a while
Jennifer H.
Delicious! I wanted a recipe for these for my birthday, but since I am not a baker (at all), I thought maybe last minute experimentations could be disastrous. I found your recipe and did a test run last night with gluten-free mixes from the store (tried a batch with Pamela’s and a batch with Betty Crocker – the difference was negligible). The only 2 things I will change for the real batch will be that I will make the frosting from scratch (as you suggested). I thought since I was “cheating” with using a store bought mix, why not use the store bought frosting? I tried a can of vanilla and a can of buttercream. Both were so strong that it took a lot of pure maple syrup to taste the maple and it made the pre-made frosting too thin. (Of course now that I am finished baking and am typing this, I see you wrote EXTRACT and not syrup. Ah ha, oops. I’ll blame it on the lateness of the night…) The other thing I would change would be how I made the candied bacon. You weren’t kidding when you said it was time-consuming! My favorite maple bacon recipe that we make frequently: simply pull the bacon from the oven 5 minutes before it’s done, brush pure maple syrup on top and then bake for 5 more minutes. The maple is even stronger and I think that will simplify the process for me. Anyway – thank you so much for this delicious recipe! Excited to make it for my family and friends for my birthday next week! 🙂
Liane Carmen
Several years ago, we accidentally found a little restaurant that served specialty cupcakes and the maple bacon cupcakes were in my boyfriend’s words “ridiculous!” They don’t make them every day as they rotate all the recipes. I’ve requested them special every year for my boyfriend’s birthday, driving almost an hour round trip to pick them up. This year I’m going to try your recipe! Wish me luck – they sound “ridiculous!” and I think I may be on to something here!
Ashlee
hope you love them as much as we do!
Christin Hubbard
Hi there,
I am making these for a brunch baby shower and I had a quick question about alternatives!
I am dairy-free and was wondering if the frosting/cake would still turn out if I used a dairy substitute such as vegan butter or crisco? I’ve tried making other frostings before with crisco and I wouldn’t say they were bad really…just oily maybe. Also, I tried once with smart start butter (vegan) and wow did that turn out to be a mess!
Thanks so much in advance!
Ashlee
butter has lower melting point than shortening which is why so many recipes use shortening to hold up – this frosting will always be on the softer side because I use butter, tastes great but not great for piping or stiff peaks. in that case I’d use shortening and add butter emulsion for butter flavor and salt to cut down on the greasy feel.
Kim
I made these last month and I could’ve sworn I used a boxed cake mix and instant vanilla pudding. Did you change the recipe?
Ashlee
Yes, I don’t like using boxed mixes so I changed it to the recipe I prefer using – it’s easy and IMO tastes so much better. I haven’t updated this old post yet, it still has the box mix version http://ashleemarie.com/five-wedding-cupcake-recipes/
Kimberly
Thanks so much. I did go ahead and make them without the box and they were delicious!!!
Ashlee
so glad you liked it! I much prefer it and it’s really not hard!
Brittany
What is vanilla sugar?
Can i use regular sugar?
Ashlee Marie
yes you can, just use vanilla in the recipe as well.
Jennifer Graf
My frosting was a little loose. Suggestions? Flavor stop on!
Ashlee
it is def a softer frosting – you can leave out the stabilized whipped cream, it will simply be a sweet american buttercream but be stronger
ChelseA
I have seen comments about instant pudding but don’t see it in the recipe? Also not understanding the “altitude” alterations to the ingredients. Tia
Ashlee Marie
I’ve changed the recipe since the original posting – there isn’t pudding in the current version. And if you live at a high altitude you need to adjust the ingredients for baked goods. If you don’t live at high altitude you can ignore the notes.
Shelly Merrill
I am entering these cupcakes at a BBQ contest, they are just yummy and wonderful. I will be using a large cupcake liner and wondering how long I should bake the larger cupcake in the oven.
Thanks!
Ashlee Marie
I haven’t tried to make this recipe in a larger cupcake form, so I’m not sure. Here is a quick guide on wiltons site https://www.wilton.com/cms-batter-amounts.html
Pam
Love these cupcakes! They are so moist. Making them for Thanksgiving. Doing a double batch and freezing some so I can take them to a family Christmas party next month.
Ashlee Marie
so glad you like them! They are def my all time favorite!
Nikki
Would love to make this but the link for the frosting seems to be taken down. Could you possibly share with me?
Ashlee Marie
did you fill out the form to join the newsletter? you should get an email with the link and password for the frosting