Maple once, maple twice

Around Christmas, we bought some panettone. While I don't care for the idea of fruit cake, I'll throw down on some panettone. I splurged and bought a fancy one at our grocery store, wrapped in crisp red paper and tied with a ribbon. Here is how pretty it looked (thanks, Amazon!).

My original idea was to make French toast with it, but that panettone was so pillowy and delicious it seemed a shame to weigh it down with milk and egg and syrup. So, instead we toasted it and ate it with butter and jam. Good idea, right?

The thing is, I'd already bought some maple syrup. Now, we don't eat many pancakes or French toast, and the husband isn't wild about maple as a flavor. But with a bottle of Vermont's finest, I figured I ought to do something worthy of it.

First, I made these scones.

These were good! But mostly because of the maple icing. The scone, um, body is perfectly nice, but let's face it, the glaze is what makes these scones sing.  There may be people out there that do not care for the idea of icing making its way into a breakfast item, but I am not one of them.

After the scones, I still had some syrup left. I also had pears, which always seem to go from hard and angry to mushy and sad in about 4 minutes.  I captured them right as they were sliding into their brief happy stage and made this maple-pear upside down cake.

I'd been holding on to this recipe literally for years--clipped it out of the Times the day it was printed in 2009. But see, I never have maple syrup on hand. So, finally...well, you see how this went down.

I didn't end up having enough syrup--I was 1/4 cup shy--but it didn't matter. And I decreased the sugar in the cake because I was worried it was going to be too sweet to pass for a breakfast cake (two of my favorite words when paired together). It was divine. Mine baked for around 38 minutes instead of 45-50 and was perfectly cooked--just know your oven.

With a cup of coffee, you'd be hard-pressed for a better way to start your day.