April Daring Bakers' Challenge: Maple Mousse in Edible Containers

I learned something wonderfully terrible today. It may mean the end of my waistline, unless I up my gym schedule to 7 days a week. When the spring weather starts, around Toronto the radio and TV stations start playing advertisements for Canada's Wonderland, our local theme park. And every year, I hear the jingle and see the brightly coloured rollercoasters flash across the TV screen, the craving starts. I want funnel cake. It used to be that I would have to pay the 30-something dollars admission, plus parking and gas money. I'd then have to walk across the huge parking lot and into the park, all the way to Top Gun (Let's be serious, Paramount may have sold the park, but no one is every going to know what you're talking about if you try to tell them that the funnel cake stand is just beside "Flight Deck"). However, today I learned something: with very little effort, and a little bit of time, I can make funnel cake at home.

The April 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Evelyne of the blog Cheap Ethnic Eatz. Evelyne chose to challenge everyone to make a maple mousse in an edible container. Prizes are being awarded to the most creative edible container and filling, so vote on your favorite from April 27th to May 27th at http://thedaringkitchen.com!

As I tried to figure out what my edible container would be, I kept coming back to pancakes. To me, pancakes are the only thing to combine with maple syrup. I considered crepes and waffles, and all sorts of things. But one day a couple weeks ago, that jingle came on the radio, the craving struck, and I knew what I wanted to make.

I also knew that I wanted to take the opportunity to taste-test some genuine New York maple syrup. I had the opportunity to go down to Ithaca, New York for a weekend to meet the boy halfway between Toronto and Philly. We had a blast, and I took the chance to introduce him to the wonders of a Farmer's Market (He has the Reading Terminal Market at his disposal, and he buys his food at ShopRite, I'm jealous). I bought some yummy granola, as well as some wonderful medium amber syrup, which I was able to buy directly from the farmer. I'm pretty big on the whole "direct from the source" supply that a farmer's market provides.

I was also able to use some local (Canadian) maple beer in the funnel cake batter. Overall, it was delicious. (But really, I could have just eaten the funnel cakes straigt from the hot oil and dealt with the 100 pounds of weight gain later).

At the suggestion of the boyfriend, there was maple candied bacon too. I wanted to fit in the original bacon component from the originally-supplied recipe. It was not so awesome. Regardless, the whole thing turned out pretty fab.