Everything Is Better with Syrup

Breakfast is not only the most important meal of the day, it is also my favorite because breakfast is as close as I can get to eating dessert first thing in the morning and still have it be socially acceptable. Pancakes? Waffles? Crepes? Sweet, delicious, and all have one thing in common: they taste best when drizzled with heaping amounts of maple syrup. God bless the (I assume Canadian) person who took one look at a maple tree and just knew it was hiding the delicious nectar of the gods within it. I love maple syrup...I've been known to "accidentally" pour too much on my French toast, causing it to ooze on over to my bacon and eggs, covering them substantially in a pile of sticky sweetness to compliment their saltiness. Like I said, closest I can get to dessert first thing in the morning. I decided if I can have dessert for breakfast, why not have breakfast for dessert? And in true Canadian fashion, I wanted to make sure my breakfast dessert was absolutely drenched with maple syrup.

Because maple syrup is magical. Cures any and all illnesses, although you might want to fact check that.

As someone with (French) Canadian heritage, there are three things I hold in extremely high regard: Tim Horton's, hockey, and maple syrup. You can bet if there was a Timmy's within a 50-mile radius of me, I'd be eating this maple syrup cake topped with cinnamon streusel and maple syrup buttercream along with a heaping pile of Tim-Bits while watching Hockey Night in Canada. This cake is like eating the lightest, fluffiest stack of streusel-topped pancakes drizzled with pure Canadian maple syrup. I am absolutely gaga for this recipe, and to top it all off, it's only 310 calories a slice (no stack of pancakes can make the same claim). This recipe yields one 9x13 cake with 16 total servings, and I would be willing to fight a grizzly bear (just not a moose) for the last slice.

It's so good, I'm considering buying my maple syrup in bulk so I can make it at least once a month. Potentially to have for breakfast or dessert because versatility is important to me.

I know, I waited for the good part: common pantry staples make the cake itself come together in absolutely no time flat. After vertical layer cakes, meringue-topped cakes, and all the other crazy concoctions I've baked up in the past few months, making a simple 9x13 cake seemed like a reward for all that hard (tasty) work. To make, you'll need:

• 1 box of vanilla cake mix
• 3 egg whites
• 6 ounces diet creme soda
• 6 ounces pure maple syrup (you could try sugar free syrup as well to lower calorie content even more)

Mix all of the ingredients together in a stand mixer on medium-high for 2 minutes while you preheat your oven to 350/325 for convection baking and grease a 9x13 pan. Turn your prepared batter into the pan and bake about 28-30 minutes until done. You'll know it's ready to come out of the oven when your house smells like Canada.

The smells of syrupy goodness.

 Let you cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack to cool completely before frosting. While your cake cools, keep your oven at 350/325 for convection and make your streusel.

Brown sugar Swerve is now a thing!!! Rejoice, sugar-free people!

Streusel is something I had actually never made before, and I now consider it dangerous to know it's so quick and easy to make. Swerve now has a brown sugar version, and this changes everything. I am definitely going to figure out how to make toffee with it, along with a thousand different cookie recipes. To make the streusel, mix together:

• 6 TBS melted butter
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 3/4 cup of flour
• 3/4 cup of packed Swerve brown sugar 

Stir these ingredients together by hand in a medium bowl until everything has come together.

Like so.

 Things will be a little crumbly, but that's normal. Spread your streusel out on a Silpat (just buy them, they're life changing) or Parchment-lined baking tray. Bake the streusel for 6 minutes at 350, then remove from the oven and set aside to cool completely. Once cooled to the touch, crumble it up into finer pieces.

Some larger chunks make for a pretty texture (and taste) when topped on the cake.

Now we come to the part of the story where everything went wrong. I wanted so, so badly to try to make a maple syrup Swiss meringue buttercream. I knew my cake was going to be sweet, even more so with the streusel on top, so I wanted to go away from a traditional American buttercream that is 10000% sweetness. I tried multiple times, but I could not get my meringue to whip up with the addition of the maple syrup, so after wasting like, a lot of eggs and all the pure maple syrup I had, I turned to the pantry to do my least favorite thing in the entire universe: improvise.

Seriously...I sketch out every cake and write out every recipe in full before baking.

Getting thrown a curve ball happens to even the best bakers (I know, I watch the Great British Bake Off), but I was still extremely sad to have to revert to a typical buttercream...especially since I ran out of the "hard stuff," a.k.a., all my pure maple syrup. Since I guzzle syrup like normal people guzzle water, I typically use sugar free Hungry Jack so I don't add an extra 13,000 calories to my waffles every weekend. I decided to give it a go and used:

• 1 - 12 ounce bag Swerve confectioners
• 1 cup of regular powdered sugar
• 1 cup of butter at room temp
• 4 TBS sugar free Hungry Jack syrup

I whipped my butter, which, unlike my eggs in my failed meringue, got light and fluffy, before adding in the Swerve and two tablespoons of syrup. I mixed well before finishing with the last two tablespoons of syrup and the cup of regular powdered sugar to cut the "cooling" effect Swerve confectioners has on its own. It's a very sticky, albeit incredibly delicious, frosting, and using the sugar free syrup definitely helped keep it from getting way too sweet when added in with everything else. I had quite a bit of frosting leftover, and I'm pretty sure that's going on top of English muffins from now until the sad day when it runs out.

It was all I could do to not dive in with a shovel.

 I didn't crumb coat this cake since I wasted so much time trying to make meringue happen and just wanted to eat a dang slice, so I took a thick amount of frosting and spread it on with a large angled spatula on top. To help smooth it out, I ran my spatula under extremely hot water before taking a few swipes on top to even everything out. I did this again with a small angled spatula to cover all the sides of the cake.

"Shell-o, is it me you're looking for?"

I originally intended to pipe an interlocking "V" border, but since this buttercream was nowhere near as firm as a Swiss meringue, trying to get a clean line from something this sticky and soft was virtually impossible. Instead I went with a tried and true shell border with the help of a #21 Wilton tip. The classics are classic for a reason, after all.

And they are so very complimentary to the streusel.

My shell border ended up being the perfect basin to hold in all my streusel, so there's something to be said for happy accidents. Once I piped my border all around the top and bottom edges of my cake, I took my crumbled streusel and dusted it on top of my cake, pressing it down to affix it to the frosting.

Bonus: you can lick your fingers once you're done with this part!

Ta-da! That's it...super simple decorations, but it looks absolutely scrumptious. And it is.

Back off, she's mine!

I woke up in the mood for a slice of this cake, although I resisted somehow because I realized ending my Monday with it would be way more rewarding than starting my Monday with it. Besides, Tuesday seems like the perfect day for breakfast cake anyway. The cake itself is so rich with maple flavor but still extremely light and fluffy. A forkful with frosting and streusel added in will transport you to another plain of existence (located approximately somewhere in British Columbia, Canada). I'm not saying you should put maple syrup on everything, but you should put maple syrup on cake for sure. This is definitely going down in my book as one of the best Kate Bakes Cakes original recipes, and I am so very glad we still have 14 more slices to fight to the death over in my house. 'Til next time, my fellow eaters!

I mean, check that cake to streusel action. Coffee cake wishes it looked this fine.