Maple Syrup & Walnut Cake

Hailing from Australia, maple syrup isn’t a big part of my life. Sure, it’s the obvious choice when choosing what to drown your pancakes in, but that’s really about it. Add the fact that getting proper Canadian maple syrup here is a rather costly experience (I pay almost $10 for a 1 cup bottle), and it’s a little understandable that I’m a bit precious with it.

Oh, and don’t talk to me about maple-flavoured syrup.

That’s like substituting carob for good quality chocolate and not expecting me to know the difference.

NO.

Not allowed.

EVER.

However, I chanced across a recipe for a maple syrup cake that just sounded too fabulous not to try – even if it required a ridiculous amount of maple syrup, what better way to make a dessert that would work with this marvellous flavour?

Of course, me being me…this meant that I absolutely butchered the recipe.

I don’t know what it is. I mean, surely – as I’d never tried this recipe before, it would make more sense to actually FOLLOW the instructions and see how it went before starting to tweak it according to my tastes. Right? I mean, that’s logical thing to do. That’s what any reasonable person would do.

Well, it’s a good thing that I’ve never claimed to be either logical or reasonable on here, otherwise I’d be just a little bit screwed!

Thankfully for me, the baking gods must have been smiling on me when I tackled this cake since it turned out absolutely fabulously, so much so that I can see this cake being a regular guest in my kitchen!

Maple Syrup & Walnut Cake

Cake Ingredients
1 cup pure maple syrup (NO MAPLE FLAVOURED SYRUP!!!!!)
1 cup sour cream (go the full fat option. Go on, do it)
60g unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 large egg
2 1/2 cups all-purpose/plain flour
1 level tsp baking soda (also known as bicarb soda)
1/2 cup toasted walnuts, roughly chopped
1/2 tsp salt

Maple syrup glaze ingredients
2 cups pure icing sugar
3 tbsp pure maple syrup
5 tbsp milk

1. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C, then pour out your maple syrup, butter and sour cream and whisk together to combine.

2. Add your egg (mine was double yolk-er), and whisk again till the mixture becomes thick and creamy.

3. Sift together the flour and baking soda, then add your toasted walnuts and toss through. Add the flour and nuts to the maple syrup mixture and mix till well incorporated and smooth.

4. Spoon into a square baking tray lined with non-stick baking paper, and bake for 30-40 minutes or till a skewer inserted into the middle comes out with moist crumbs and not wet batter stuck to it.

To make the maple syrup glaze:

Combine all the ingredients, poke holes randomly into the cake with a skewer and pour over the top. This helps enhance the maple syrup flavour and make this cake super moist.

Of course, if you can’t be bothered with this, it’s perfectly fine to place this in a small jug so each person can pour as little (or as much) of the syrup over their slice as they’d like!

Unfortunately, the cake does dry out within a few days without the syrup (I only poured it over half since it is quite sweet), but considering the size of the cake and the fact that there’s only four pieces left since making it yesterday…I don’t think that having this cake lying around is going to be a huge issue