Buttered Pancake Cupcakes with Maple Bacon Cream Cheese Frosting

Buttered pancake cupcakes with maple bacon frosting

 These cupcakes are to die for.  Seriously.  I know they sound weird, and they look weird, but they smell and taste like heaven.

Buttered pancake cupcakes with maple bacon frosting

 Ever since I watched the episode of 2 Broke Girls, where Max made beer battered chocolate cupcakes with maple bacon frosting, I've wanted to try them.  My parents and aunt went to Punta Cana for a week and they'll be arriving home at 1:30 AM.  By the time they get their luggage and get a cab back home it will be about 2:30 AM.  I don't know if they'll get fed on the plane considering it's flying so late, so I figured it would be a good time to try those cupcakes I've always wanted to try, but with a few changes.  Instead of chocolate, I'd do butter pecan, so they'd taste more like pancakes.

 I went shopping yesterday and dropped my grocery list and couldn't find it again so I ended up cheating and using a cake mix for the actual cupcake.  Duncan Hines, butter pecan, on sale for only a dollar at Walmart; woohoo! 

The cream cheese frosting recipe called for an entire brick of cream cheese, half a cup of butter, and a cup and a half of icing sugar, but my Dad is a diabetic so I used only half a cup of icing sugar and half a cup of splenda.  I didn't want to use a whole cup of splenda because I didn't want the icing to be sickly sweet.  I used a half cup of butter and added the drippings from the maple bacon to make up the rest of the fat content.  I should have used half a brick of cream cheese because I ended up with a LOT of icing.

Buttered pancake cupcakes with maple bacon frosting

 The maple bacon recipes said to either dip bacon in maple syrup or a mixture of brown sugar and water with cinnamon, and bake in the oven for 20 minutes at 350.  I did two batches; one with pure maple syrup and one with the brown sugar water/cinnamon mix, and they both came out great but I think I like the maple syrup ones better.  My dog did, too, lol.

Mac

 Here's Mac, giving his smile of approval for the cupcakes (I keep wanting to call them muffins). He enjoyed licking the bowl from the cream cheese mixture very much, lol.  That little bit of white fuzz next tot he plant is my other dog, Benji, fast asleep in the sunshine.  He was up with tummy problems last night so he didn't get to try the cupcakes and he's angry with me.

Mac

Mac, on the other hand, is thrilled, lol.