This year I’m making birthday cakes for my close friends as they, like me, reached a ‘special’ age and I wanted to share this moment with each of them. These cakes are all made unique to each person’s taste, they don’t know what I’m making for them but they know there will be a cake of some sort at the end.
I wasn’t sure what to make my friend, but on his recent visit to Canada I asked him to bring me a bottle of maple syrup. Then I thought why don’t I use the maple syrup in a cake. That was a start to a very lovely cake.
I absolutely love the taste of maple syrup, it has such an amazing taste. I love it in yoghurt, icecream, pancakes and espically granola. It has various levels of quality and they are pricey the better the quality obviously. The bottle he brought back was really good quality and was really pricey eeeekkkk I felt so bad, I did think it would be cheaper coming from Canada. The recipe I found used a generous amount of maple syrup, I did a search for other recipes but they used a lot more and I didn’t want to waste it all espically as I wasn’t sure how the cake would turn out. For that reason, I also used half good quality maple syrup and some less expensive that I had.
I was lucky enough to be allowed to have a piece of the cake and the taste of the cake was good, you could taste the maple and slight spice but I was so so so so disappointed the cake was overcooked slightly. I actually cooked it for less then the recipe had stated but still it was slightly over done. I have changed the timings in the recipe but maybe check the time as all ovens vary.
- 225g - unsalted butter softened
- 225g - light muscovado sugar
- 1 zest - orange
- 4 - eggs (I used medium)
- 100ml - maple syrup (I used a mix of good quality and normal)
- 350g - self-raising flour
- 2 tsp - baking powder
- ½ tsp - ground ginger
- 50g - pecans, chopped
- Icing
- 300g - cream cheese
- 2 tbsp maple syrup
- optional* finely chopped pecan nuts or you can use grated orange zest
- 1. Line a 8" tall cake tin and pre-heat the oven to fan 160°C.
- 2. In a stand mixer put the butter and sugar in a bowl until well combined. Add the maple syrup and mix, then eggs one in a time and mix after each egg. In another bowl add the flour, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon, mixed spice and orange zest and mix until combined. Add the flour mix into the stand and mix until combined. Finally add pecan nuts and mix don't over mix.
- 3. Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin and level the surface. Bake for *40-45 min, until well risen, golden and springy to the touch. Allow to cool slightly, then turn the cake out onto a wire rack, peel off the lining paper and leave to cool completely.
- 4. For the icing in a stand mixer, combined the cream cheese and maple syrup until smooth. When the cake is completely cool, cut the cake into three with a serrated knife*. Using a palette knife spread a third of the icing on each of the layers then top with the remaining over on the top of the cake. Decorate the top with finely chopped nuts or the grated orange zest.
- *Check the cake after 40mins.
- **I'm not the best at doing this try and do it slowly and keep the knife level, it's even easier with a lazy susan if you have one!
