Although I used the recipe from Martha's book, there is a very similar recipe on her web site. That recipe is for a layer cake, but you can easily turn it into cupcakes by pouring the batter into lined cupcake tins and baking them for 25 minutes. I actually think the web site recipe may be better, because it uses maple syrup in the cake batter (the recipe in her book does not; it relies on the maple buttercream for all of the maple flavor).
These cupcakes were fairly easy to make, although there was one kitchen casualty. You have to keep reading for the details.
The first step of the recipe required sifting together the dry ingredients in a large bowl (flour, baking powder, salt, ground spices).
Then I used my stand mixer to cream the butter and sugar together.
I added the eggs and beat everything together until they were thoroughly combined. The mixture got nice and fluffy.
Next, I added the rest of the liquid ingredients (maple syrup, vanilla extract) and stirred until everything was combined. (Sorry, no photo of this step.)The recipe called for medium-to-finely chopped nuts. I toasted my pecans before chopping them, because I wanted to give them some extra flavor. In hindsight, I think I should have chopped them more finely than this, but I think this is a matter of personal taste.
I added the dry ingredients to the liquid ingredients and mixed them together with a rubber spatula.
Finally, I mixed in the pecans with a wooden spoon.
Now that my batter was ready, I poured it into lined muffin tins. I made half of them into regular-sized cupcakes, and the other half into mini-sized cupcakes.
This is what they looked like when I took them out of the oven. They were lightly browned on top, and they passed the "toothpick test."
Now I had to create the buttercream frosting. I love buttercream, but shockingly, I've never made it before. The first step of the frosting recipe was to beat 6 egg yolks on high speed, until they became fluffy. This is a picture of the egg yolks while my mixer was whirring.
In the meantime, I had to boil the maple syrup on the stove and cook it until a candy thermometer reached 240 degrees, which was supposed to take about 15 minutes. I have never made homemade candy before, and I wasn't even sure if I had a candy thermometer, but I found one in the back of my utensil drawer.
If you've never done this before, I can tell you that maple syrup gets kind of volatile after it's been boiling for 15 minutes. It looks fine here:
But after about 10 minutes, it threatened to overflow the rim of my saucepan. Stirring it only made things worse! I had to remove the pan from the burner several times, to prevent boiling maple syrup from erupting all over my stove. 
Can you see the candy thermometer clipped to the left side of my saucepan? When the maple syrup reached the proper temperature, I tried to remove the thermometer, but the sticky syrup didn't want to let the thermometer go. Part of the glass of the thermometer broke off, and the thermometer came apart into several pieces. RIP candy thermometer. My first Martha-related kitchen casualty. :(
After removing the syrup from the heat, I slowly poured it into my egg mixture, and I beat them together for about 2 minutes. Then I added the chilled butter, and I thoroughly beat everything together for several minutes, until the frosting was nice and fluffy.
Hello, maple buttercream! Come to mama!
Nom nom nom! We ate the cupcakes with homemade maple ice cream (which is my new favorite ice cream, by the way).
I want to give an honest evaluation of all of the recipes I make, so I will admit that these were not the best cupcakes I've ever had. I LOVED the maple buttercream, and I will definitely make that again. But the actual cupcakes were only okay. They seemed more like muffins than cupcakes to me. I think the nuts threw me off, because the texture of the cupcakes reminded me of the banana-nut muffins I made earlier in the week. Also, the recipe in Martha's book didn't add any maple syrup to the actual cupcakes. They weren't nearly maple-y enough. If I wanted to make these again, I'd try the recipe on her web site, which uses maple syrup in the cake. I'd also chop the nuts more finely, and possibly reduce the amount of nuts in the recipe.
Hello, maple buttercream! Come to mama!
Nom nom nom! We ate the cupcakes with homemade maple ice cream (which is my new favorite ice cream, by the way).
I want to give an honest evaluation of all of the recipes I make, so I will admit that these were not the best cupcakes I've ever had. I LOVED the maple buttercream, and I will definitely make that again. But the actual cupcakes were only okay. They seemed more like muffins than cupcakes to me. I think the nuts threw me off, because the texture of the cupcakes reminded me of the banana-nut muffins I made earlier in the week. Also, the recipe in Martha's book didn't add any maple syrup to the actual cupcakes. They weren't nearly maple-y enough. If I wanted to make these again, I'd try the recipe on her web site, which uses maple syrup in the cake. I'd also chop the nuts more finely, and possibly reduce the amount of nuts in the recipe.
1 comment:
I've made these too. My opinion was similar to yours - they were good, and I like the idea, but they were maybe a little too dry. I like the idea of adding maple syrup to the cake itself; I'll have to check out the website for that recipe.
I didn't toast the nuts, but I remember thinking afterward that I should have.
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