Maple Walnut Muffins (Nigella Lawson)

This is a short and sweet post about these are a few of my favourite things...

• Maple syrup
• Walnuts
• Nigella Lawson's recipes with lots of sensual ways of cooking and eating.

By the way, have you seen Nigella's Slut's spaghetti from her book, Kitchen... She was enjoying her Slut's spaghetti in her red silky robe - LOL!

• BAKING, of course! ... always my most favourite thing.

These maple walnut muffins are made with this fantastic recipe by Nigella Lawson. All I did was mix, bake and enjoy. Like Nigella's Slut's spaghetti, I wish that I can enjoy these muffins in my red silky robe too - LOL! They are indeed pretty sensual to eat as you can imagine.

Ready to feast your eyes with these...

My maple walnut muffins

The Sound of Music ~ these are a few of my favourite things...

Making these super-easy muffins

Before and after baking...

Here's the Nigella's art of eating these muffins...

Enjoying these heavenly moments...

My red silky robe is slipping off - Ops!

Here's the recipe mostly adapted from the book, Feasts by Nigella Lawson
(with my modification and notes in blue)

125g shelled pecans
(replaced by walnuts)
275g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
50g wheatgerm
a pinch of salt
125ml milk
125ml maple syrup
125ml corn oil 
(replace with half amount of walnut oil and half amount of rice bran oil)
1 egg
1 tbsp dark brown sugar 
(I used 1 tbsp dark muscovado sugar for half the recipe)

Preheat oven to 200°C (or 180°C fan forced). Fill a 12-bun muffin tin with papers.

Chop the pecans (or walnuts) roughly, reserving about 1/4 of them to use late. Pre-roast the 3/4 of the nuts at 180°C fan forced for 7 mins and allow them to cool to room temperature before mixing. Combine flour, baking powder, wheatgerm and salt in a large bowl. In a measuring jug, whisk together the milk, maple syrup, corn oil and egg. Pour into the dry ingredients plus the pre-roasted nuts and mix to combine but don't worry if the mixture is lumpy. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tin.

Chop the reserved nuts slightly further and mix with brown sugar (+ salted butter - see note) and then sprinkle a little on to the top of each muffin. Bake for 20 mins by which time the muffins will have risen. Apart from their sugary topping, they are distinctly pale but wouldn't be very golden.

Remove the muffins from their tin onto a cooling rack and eat while they are still warm either with a spread of butter or more maple syrup... just like what I did!

Note: Using half of the recipe, I have baked 6 muffins. Instead of spreading butter onto warm muffins, I have mixed 1 tbsp of salted butter with 1 tbsp dark muscovado sugar plus the reserved nuts and spread the topping on the muffins before baking. My muffins were served warm with drizzles of maple syrup... *smile* 

Happy Baking

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