Baking on Friday (Thursday edition): A Save!

Looking for the October Linky Party?  Click here.

If you're wondering what the save is about, you'll have to read my post from earlier today.  After writing my earlier post, I went off to go swimming.  As for swimming, I've worked my way up to 40 lengths, which is 2/3 of my swimming goal.  I'm doing okay with the exercise part of my diet/exercise commitment.  As for weight loss...well, you'll see in a minute that I'm not very good about watching my diet.  I'm too much of a sugar fiend (and not ashamed to say so).

Anyway...when I got home, I put the glaze on my now cooled Maple-Glazed Pumpkin-Cranberry Coffee Cake.

Please don't laugh at my Tupperware cake keeper.  It's a wedding gift from 1975. Didn't your mother teach you that it's impolite to laugh at old people?  Besides, a food stylist I am not.  (What kind of a job is that, anyway?)

Then after I had it glazed, I cut into it and ate a piece as quickly as possible.  Actually I only cut into it as quickly as possible.  I ate it slowly and savored every bite.  Here's how it looks on the inside. 

It has a cup of chopped toasted walnuts (sorry, Sue) and two cups of chopped fresh cranberries, although mine were frozen. And it was delicious.  So moist and flavorful, and the maple glaze is really nice.  It's made from 1 cup of powdered sugar and 1/4 cup of maple syrup.  Then you add additional maple syrup one teaspoon at a time until it is the right consistency.  My maple syrup was cold from the refrigerator, and I ended up adding an additional tablespoon.  It was still a little thick, but I used my whisk to drizzle it, and it worked out pretty well.  I like the glaze to be a little on the thick side so that it doesn't soak into the cake and disappear.

So this would be good for breakfast, brunch or dessert.  Or dinner.  Or lunch.  Or any time you want to soothe your soul with plenty of sugary goodness, as I often do.  Like when you need to rip out all those half square triangles you sewed together wrong.  I'm sure it would be an excellent accompaniment to that little task.

The recipe first appeared in the October, 2012, issue of Coastal Living, a magazine I don't happen to read.  You can find it right here.

And now that I've totally blown the calorie burn I gained from swimming, I'll go off and do a little sewing.  Sewing is probably a less efficient way to burn calories, but there you go.