A flavour that I admit I have overlooked in my cooking for far too many years is Butter Pecan. I first made it as ice cream from a Ben and Jerry’s recipe book – whole pecans fried in butter until toasty and caramelised, in vanilla ice cream. So delicious. It’s day four of Cupcake a Day May, and I have declared: Time for Butter Pecan Cupcakes!
Butter Pecan Cupcakes
These cupcakes are made with browned butter, both in the cake and in the frosting, and are loaded with butter fried pecans! A few more butter fried pecans on top, and we are in cholesterol heaven.
Butter Pecan Cupcakes
Butter Pecan Cupcakes with Browned Butter Pecan frosting
Buttered pecans
(use 1 ½ cups in the cupcakes and ½ cup in the frosting)
2 cups pecans
100g salted butter
Melt the butter in a frying pan, and add the pecans. Toss the pecans in the hot butter until the pecans are toasted and the butter is brown. Tip into a dish to cool, tossing them every now and again to ensure even coating of the butter. When the pecans are cold, chop them roughly.
Browned butter
350g salted butter
Melt the butter in a small saucepan and let it sizzle until it starts to turn a deep gold and smell a bit like butterscotch – about 2-3 minutes. Remove from the heat, pour into a container (even the brown sediments), and chill. While the butter is cooling down and setting, stir every so often to keep the sediments distributed. Let come to room temperature before using in the recipes below. Note: it’s right that this part of the recipe seems to have more butter than the combined total requirements of “browned butter” below. The browning process causes some moisture to be lost, hence you wind up with less weight than you started with.
It’s not pretty… But don’t judge it!
Butter Pecan cupcakes
ingredients
130g browned butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 ½ cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
½ cup milk
1 ¾ cups toasted buttered pecans
mixing
Line a 12 hole muffin tin with cupcake cases and spray cases with non-stick spray.
Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs. Beat in vanilla. Sift dry ingredients together and add to the mixture with milk. Beat well.
Spoon the mixture into the cupcake cases, and bake at 175 degrees Celsius about 20-25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Let the cupcakes cool.
Butter Pecan Cupcakes cooling down
Browned Butter Pecan frosting
ingredients
200g browned butter
100 g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla
½ cup buttered pecans, chopped finely
mixing
Beat softened butter until creamy. Add the icing sugar and mix on low speed to combine. Add vanilla. Increase the mixing speed to high and beat until pale and fluffy. Stir in a bit more than half the buttered pecans.
Spread the frosting over the cold cupcakes, making rough peaks. Sprinkle the rest of the buttered pecans over the frosted cupcakes.
Om nom nom
Enjoy!xxx
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