Maple Bundt Cake

3 1/2 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups pure maple syrup
2/3 cup canola oil
2 Tbs vanilla extract
1 Tbs apple cider vinegar
2 tsp maple extract
1 1/3 cups water
confectioner's sugar, for dusting

1) Preheat oven to 325F.  Lightly coat 10-inch Bundt pan with cooking spray.
2) Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in bowl.
3) Whisk maple syrup, oil, vanilla extract, apple cider vinegar, maple extract and water in large separate bowl.  Stir in flour mixture until just blended.
4) Pour batter into prepared pan.  Bake 50 to 60 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean and cake begins to pull away from sides of pan.  Cool in pan on rack 20 minutes.  Unmold onto rack, and cool completely.  Dust with confectioners' sugar before serving.

Review:  Mike was so touched by a professor making him a birthday cake, that he felt the need to reciprocate the gesture.  Which actually meant me making a cake.  :)  I presented him with a few recipes from recent magazines and he chose this one.  I figured it was a good choice, as it seemed like a nice, Fall flavor.  What I didn't realize until I started making it, was how odd the recipe is.  There's no egg, butter or sugar - all typical ingredients for a cake.  Despite this, it rose just fine and tasted great (a little piece got stuck to the pan and I fortunately got to sample that!).  It's easy to make, and I got to use the trick of shaking powdered sugar through a tea ball to sprinkle evenly.  Do note, it's hard to find maple extract.  All I could find locally was artificial maple flavoring.  It seemed to do the trick, but I hate artificial flavors and regret that it's all I could find.  Luckily, I'm able to get big bottles of really great maple syrup at Costco (and I also recently bought the big bottle of vanilla extract, which is the exact same price as small bottles at the normal grocery store!).  Ah, a bargain, a great cake and hopefully a happy professor tomorrow. 

Happy Birthday Dr. Harrawood!!!!