Maple Bacon Cake Recipe

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We had a snowpocalypse last week. Basically, all the snow thought it’d be a great idea to have a party on our driveway and sidewalk. My husband was working a night shift at the hospital and, realizing he wouldn’t have a way to get into our garage and being the absolutely incredible wifey that I am, I decided to tackle the shoveling on my own. (Don’t ask me why we haven’t bought a snowblower after almost 5 years in Minnesota.) Needless the say, I was struggling about 1.5 hours into the shoveling, and our wonderful neighbor came over with his snowblower to save the day! When thinking of how to express our appreciation, naturally bacon came to mind. He did save our bacon after all. Hence, this yep-i’ll-have-another-slice-immediately-please maple bacon cake recipe!

Maple Bacon Cake Recipe Ingredients & Directions

The Cake

You can find the cake ingredients & directions over at our previous post Naked Cake With Berry Compote Recipe and How-To. We took this three-layered cake recipe and made a double-layered cake for our neighbor and a single layer for ourselves. I mean, can you blame us?

Obvs, you’ll want to not make the berry compote because this time we’ll be using bacon and a gooey, yummy maple sauce instead! Hint: I have a time-and-effort-saving tip below for using store-bought frosting.

In this maple bacon cake recipe, I actually substituted in applesauce for the eggs because I have meal planning/grocery shopping struggles. No worries! Though the texture was different, it still turned out super good! Moral of the story: just let baking be fun and don’t stress about having aaaall the ingredients. Enjoy experimenting with substitutions and seeing how it impacts textures and flavors!

The Vanilla Frosting

I’m not going to lie. This time I did not make my frosting from scratch because life. Instead, I doctored up some store-bought frosting. I knew I was going to be making a maple sauce, which is very sweet, so I wanted to make the frosting taste just a bit less like a sugar bomb.

Here’s a trick for making store-bought frosting less sweet:

Put a 16 oz. container of frosting in a bowl, and microwave for like 20 seconds max. This will make it softer and easier to stir.
Sprinkle about 1/4 to 1/2 a teaspoon of salt across the top.
Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla.
Mix like crazy. (You really don’t want a clump of salt or weird patches of sweet and salty.)
When it’s all mixed super well, put it in the fridge until it’s a good spreading consistency.

The Maple Bacon Sauce & Toppings

Ingredients:

8 slices bacon
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

It’s pretty simple, folks.

Cook bacon on medium heat in skillet, flipping so both sides golden. (I personally love to use a non-stick pan because clean up is way easier.) When cooked, remove from heat and set aside to cool on a paper towel.
Heat butter in microwave until just melted.
While butter is still hot, stir in brown sugar, maple syrup, and vanilla.
Take 4 pieces of bacon and crumble them into the syrup mixture.
Drizzle mixture over frosted cake. Top with remaining 4 bacon pieces.
Stuff your face.

What I love most about this recipe (yes, even more than the bacon) is that my 4-year-old daughter was able to help me throughout the entire process…minus the stove top and oven part. How she was able to not snitch a piece of bacon until the end is beyond me.

Anyway, I hope you have fun making and consuming this maple bacon cake recipe! And just out of curiosity, what are some of your favorite desserts to make with your family? Whether it bacon-based or not, please let a comment below!

The DIY Lighthouse