Maple syrup and bacon - in a cupcake?
"The smoky, salty flavor of bacon cuts through the incredibly sugary maple flavor to deliver the ultimate sweet and savory combo"
The Huffpost
It was my son's birthday the other day and we all went out to our favourite Indian restaurant for a meal. For dessert, my son's partner had brought a selection of fancy cupcakes from Cupcake Central in Melbourne Central. The one I chose, because I was intrigued was a maple bacon one. That's it above. You took out the little tube of maple syrup and squeezed it over the top. It was pretty tasty although I confess I didn't get much of a bacon taste.
I did know that maple syrup is often used as a glaze on ham, and I guess I had a vague idea that it was also used with pork, ham and maybe bacon sometimes. Not a new idea at all. The sweet and sour concept is common around the world after all. But I had not come across maple syrup and bacon in what are basically sweet dishes.
To confirm the idea today the recipe I was transferring to my database happened to be for Bill Granger's ricotta hotcakes which were served with maple-syrup glazed bacon. Still mostly savoury I guess but there was that maple syrup and bacon thing again, so I thought I would look into it. Starting with where did this come from?
The short answer to that is I have no idea. I did try to find out but I failed really. I think the maple syrup and bacon thing is probably very old and obviously North American - no doubt the Americans and the Canadians quarrel over who has ownership of the idea, but let's assume that it's a natural affinity that was discovered a long time ago.
"It's bacon, doused in maple syrup and baked in the oven until crisp. You wouldn't think it would be so remarkable, but the combination of treacly sweetness and salty savouriness is alarmingly good. It has even been referred to as ''man candy''."
Jill Dupleix
That takes care of the maple syrup and bacon combination which is nowadays reduced to the term 'maple bacon' and the maple syrup and bacon combo is very frequently found somewhere on all of those breakfast menus in trendy cafés. And Bill Granger is one of the people who started all of that here in Australia I believe.
But what about the more extreme and odd sounding sweet dishes - like the cupcake that started all this. Well I found a heap. Here is a selection: (spiced chocolate pots de crème with candied bacon and maple cream, maple bacon marshmallows, sticky maple bacon bars and maple syrup pecan and bacon lollies - you have to crunch these, not lick them to get the crunchiness of the bacon.)
Maybe the ultimate is a maple bacon doughnut.
"What sounds like a sweet and salty mess turns out to be a finely judged marriage, with the doughnut light and surprisingly unsugary, and the stack of streaky bacon providing a crisp and savoury backbone. Even the maple drizzle adds a note of sweetness, rather than overpowering everything." Phil Daoust in The Guardian
And then there's maple bacon ice-cream. I did find a little bit of history on this one. Well not exactly as when I read more closely it was more an egg and bacon ice-cream. Originally floated on The Two Ronnies back in 1979 as a joke, somebody in America tried it in his restaurant for an April Fool's Day prank. But then Heston Blumenthal became intrigued, experimented in his kitchen and eventually succeeded with what has become a very successful dish. Lots of other chefs have followed suit and I saw from my trawl of pictures that, probably in America, you can even buy it in cartons.
I will conclude with two more weird things - the first is bacon jam - yes bacon jam. Martha Stewart is the proposer of this recipe. In the picture it looks a little like onion jam or confit as it is sometimes fashionably called. I guess it makes just as much sense, and I guess you could use it in much the same way. And yes there is maple syrup in it. She calls it Slow-cooker bacon jam and if you click on the name you can find the recipe.
And last but in a way, most interestingly - maple syrup snow popsicles. This does not include bacon - it's just maple syrup. And you would not be able to make it here unless you were up in the snowfields in winter. Pack some snow in a largish flat container. Boil some maple syrup for about ten minutes. Pour long strips of the maple syrup on to the frozen snow. Take a popsicle stick and, starting at one end of the maple syrup (which will have become like toffee), roll it up until the other end. Apparently it's a big thing in Canada.
I do like maple syrup - it's somehow not quite as cloyingly sweet as sugar or honey and I do like bacon and I have used maple syrup in glazes for ham, but never in anything sweet. I could be tempted by the jam I think, but I'm not sure about any of the others. Which isn't to say my maple bacon cupcake wasn't delicious.
