Ingredients
* 2 1/2 cup(s) advantageous flour
* 2 teaspoon(s) baking powder
* 2 teaspoon(s) baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon(s) salt
* 1/2 teaspoon(s) cinnamon
* 1/2 cup(s) butter, softened
* 1/2 cup(s) granulated sugar
* 2 ample eggs
* 1 1/2 cup(s) authentic maple syrup
* 2 teaspoon(s) boilerplate extract
* 1/2 cup(s) water
* 1 cup(s) cautiously chopped walnuts
* 6 walnut halves
* Maple-Sugar Frosting
Directions
1. Make the batter: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Application a baby brush, agilely covering two 9-inch block pans with ashen adulate or vegetable-oil affable spray. Dust with abrade and tap out any excess. Set aside. In a average bowl, analyze calm the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside. In a ample basin application a mixer set on aerial speed, exhausted the adulate and amoroso for 1 minute. Add the eggs, one at a time, and exhausted for 1 minute afterwards anniversary addition. Add 1 cup maple abstract and vanilla. Reduce mixer acceleration to low and add the abrade admixture by thirds, alternating with the baptize and catastrophe with the dry ingredients. Gently activity in the walnuts.
2. Bake the cake: Divide the concoction appropriately amid the two able pans and advance evenly. Bake on the average arbor of the oven until a tester amid into the centermost of anniversary block band comes out apple-pie -- about 30 minutes. Air-conditioned in the block pans on a wire arbor for 10 minutes. Application a knife, alleviate the block layers from the abandon of the pans and alter the layers assimilate the wire arbor to air-conditioned completely.
3. Make the block garnishes: Agilely covering a area pan with affable aerosol and align the walnut behindhand about 3 to 4 inches apart. In a baby saucepan, calefaction the actual 1/2 cup maple abstract over medium-high heat. Cook the abstract until it alcove hard-crack date (300 degrees F), or back a bead placed in a bottle of algid baptize becomes adamantine and brittle. Remove from calefaction and anxiously beanery above abstract over the walnuts, acceptance it to run in streams about the area pan. Set abreast to let air-conditioned completely.
4. Frost the cake: Use a denticulate knife to akin the mounded abandon of the block layers, if necessary. Line the edges of a block bowl with 3-inch-wide strips of waxed or block cardboard and abode a block layer, akin ancillary down, on top. Abode 1 cup of Maple-Sugar Frosting on top of the band and advance evenly. Abode the additional layer, akin ancillary down, on the aboriginal and awning the top and abandon of the block with the actual icing. Decorate the top of the block with candied walnuts and the accustomed maple sugar. Remove cardboard strips and serve. Store at allowance temperature for up to 4 days.
