As you will know, I’m currently on holiday in Orlando so I thought that the recipes I post whilst I’m there should be reflective of the kind of food I love to eat when I’m there.
This recipe for pecan pie muffins is so quick and simple, and uses very few ingredients. The method is a little unorthodox for me, but I went with it and the result was just fine!
This made 20 mini muffins. I’ll mention here, that the size difference between a muffin in the UK and a muffin in the US is different, so I just went with it and made the amount that the batter gave me. The recipe states it’s 8 muffins. I made 20 mini muffins. I suspect mine were mini cupcake size.
I set the oven to 160c (fan) and buttered a silicone tray in preparation for the batter. Then I chopped the pecans.
In a medium bowl I mixed the dry ingredients together: 1 cup of packed (pressed down) light brown sugar, 1/2 cup of plain flour, and 2 cups of chopped pecans.
Now, with cake batters, I’m used to creaming the butter and sugar together to start with and then adding the rest of the dry ingredients. Then when you add the eggs, there’s no curdling and everything is smooth. The next step in this recipe was to ‘beat’ 2/3 cup of softened butter and 2 beaten eggs, together.
I honestly don’t know how to do this. Everything’s too wet and slippery to ‘beat’ together. I ended up with this:
At which point I gave up and gradually added the dry ingredients into the wet, beating fast to try to prevent curdling.
If you look closely, you can see this still curdled a bit. But usually this will right itself in the oven anyway, so I just carried on.
I spooned the batter into the cups. The recipe stated to fill each cup 2/3 full. I clearly ignored this and just put a load in each one…
This then went into the oven for 15 minutes, until a toothpick came out clean when inserted into the middle of the muffins.
I left these to cool a little for a few minutes, before popping them out of the tray (I love these silicone trays!) and left them to cool entirely.
Once cooled it was time to try them!
Because these were called ‘Pecan Pie’ muffins, I expected them to be a bit sweeter, which is the main reason I made them as mini muffins instead of standard size. But they were really very tasty despite this.
The cake was a little dense, but still light. The denseness probably due to the method of making the batter. The pecans offered a lovely crunch and additional sweetness to the muffin.
The verdict:
These were quick, easy and tasty! They might be a little better with some kind of maple glaze on top.
I give this recipe 6/10
Musings of a So-Called Shutterbug 