These maple walnut muffins are filled with the flavours of warm, buttered pancakes. Made with a nice bit of whole wheat flour, toasted walnuts and sweetened only with real maple syrup.
I have been enjoying these maple walnut muffins for several years. I love the crispy tops and tender middle and their rich butter and maple flavours balanced against the toasted walnuts. And finally, I love the wonderful aroma they spread through the house when they are baking. These muffins are a treat!
Ingredients and Substitutions
Maple Syrup – You’ll want to use pure, maple syrup for these muffins. Grade B maple syrup will provide the richest and strongest maple flavour. Grade A will work just fine, but with a bit lighter maple flavour. I do know that maple syrup is unavailable in some places, but unfortunately, there really isn’t a decent maple syrup substitute that I can suggest.
I also know that even when maple syrup is available, it can be very expensive in some places. In that case, I would suggest that you make just a 1/2 batch for a first try, just so you can be sure that you enjoy these muffins, before jumping in with a large amount of maple syrup.
Flour – this recipe uses both all purpose and whole wheat flour. For the all purpose flour, unbleached is recommended, if you have it. Otherwise, regular bleached is fine. If you don’t have whole wheat flour, you can simply add more all purpose flour, in the same amount as specified for the whole wheat flour. I haven’t tested using all whole wheat flour in these muffins. I suspect that while it would “work”, it will produce quite heavy muffins.
Butter – While the recipe specifies unsalted butter, you can use salted butter if that’s all you have. Simply reduce the added salt by 1/4 tsp. And while I think the butter flavour is one of the nicest part of these muffins, if you prefer not to use butter at all, you can try substituting an equal amount of a neutral-tasting oil such as vegetable or canola.
Milk – whole (3.5% b.f.) milk is recommended, though a 2% milk should work fine here. For a non-dairy alternative, I suspect a dairy alternative milk should work here, though I haven’t tested it myself.
Walnuts – the combination of maple and walnut is a classic, though pecans would also work here, if you prefer. For a nut-free maple muffin, simply omit the nuts altogether.
Baker’s Notes
- If you love a nutty muffin, you can increased the chopped walnuts in these muffins to 1 cup.
- As with most muffins, once you combine the wet and dry ingredients, you want to mix, with a spoon, only until the flour is incorporated. Scatter the walnuts in when there is only a bit of flour showing, to avoid over-mixing when adding the walnuts.
- I always use baking spray to grease my muffin cups and have never had an issue with these muffins sticking. So I recommend baking spray if you have it. If not, to be sure you don’t have issues, you may wish to use muffin liners.
- If you’re adventurous, try these variations: Switch up the walnuts with pecans. Or raisins. Or try chopped, cooked bacon for a maple bacon muffin!
- These muffins are best enjoyed freshly baked warm with butter. They will keep well in an airtight container or freeze for longer storage.
Storing and Freezing
Store these muffins in an air-tight container for 2-3 days. These muffins will freeze well up to 3 months.
Get the Recipe: Bakery Style Maple Walnut Muffins
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
- 1 Tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon fine salt, reduce to 1/4 tsp if using salted butter
- 12 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
- 1/2 cup whole milk, cold
- 1 1/2 cups pure maple syrup, Grade B for best flavour or Grade A
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F. (regular bake setting/not fan assisted). Scatter walnuts onto a baking sheet. To toast, place in preheated oven for 5-8 minutes, watching closely and stirring regularly, until fragrant. Remove from oven and remove from baking sheet to a clean plate to cool.
- Raise oven temperature to 400F. Spray a 12 cup muffin tin with baking spray. Set aside. *if you don't have baking spray, you may wish to use paper liners to avoid sticking.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the all purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, add the melted (and slightly cooled) butter. Add the cold milk, maple syrup, the whole egg and the egg yolk. Whisk to combine. *The mixture may be a bit lumpy, as the cold milk and/or maple syrup may cause the butter fats to solidify. That's fine.
- Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture and stir with a spoon just until the flour is incorporated. Add the cooled, toasted walnuts and stir just to combine.
- Using a 2 1/2-inch diameter scoop or a large spoon, divide the batter between the 12 muffin cups.
- Bake muffins at 400F. for 10 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 375F and bake an additional 12-14 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the muffins comes out clean.
Notes
More Muffin Recipes to Love!
Hi! I’m Jennifer, a home cook schooled by trial and error and almost 40 years of getting dinner on the table! I love to share my favourite recipes, both old and new, together with lots of tips and tricks to hopefully help make your home cooking enjoyable, stress free, rewarding and of course, delicious!
I made these muffins yesterday and just have one concern. When you add the milk to melted and cooled butter you mention that it dose solidify and that only makes sense. However you do end up with those bigger pieces of butter in batter. I tried to mix them in but realized I was probably overworking the batter. They just don’t mix in very evenly at all. The batter seemed very thick.Is there any way around this or do we just mix together the way I did?These are great muffins, but I am hoping to make them better!
Hi Carol, the only way to stop the milk from solidifying the butter is to make the milk (and maple syrup) warmer, which is something you could experiment with, if you like. That said, the only time you need to worry about over-mixing muffins, is after you have mixed together the wet and dry ingredients. You can stir the heck out of the wet ingredients without any worry and bread down the larger bits of butter, which is what I generally do. I’ve never really seen the bits of butter as an issue, but let me know if you experiment and find otherwise :)
Hi again Jennifer,Unfortunately it was too late -when I added the dry ingredients to the wet is when I realized this problem.I should have tried to break down the butter prior to that but did not heed my inner warning voice. I like the idea about warming the milk and also might use vegetable oil sometime,as well. These are both great options. However all this being said, my husband loved the way these turned out so I will take this as a win!
So glad to hear :) I know it’s a bit off-putting to see the butter chunks, but I honestly don’t think it hurts these muffins in any way and the butter adds such nice flavour to these. Like hot buttered pancakes :)
These muffins taste great and I love how simple the ingredients are. My family loves them warmed up with a bit of butter.
So happy you are all enjoying them, Jennifer :) Thanks so much!
Page 9 does not print correctly. Missing first paragraph and prints next paragraph with first line cut in half. I had to go back to full page and fill in missing info.
Well you threw me when you said Page 9, but then I realized that you were printing the whole page, rather than just the recipe card. Understand that web pages are coded for the web and not for ease of printing (unfortunately). Your best best it to print the recipe card using the PRINT button inside the recipe card. Alternately, select just the parts you want to print by selecting (highlighting) and then printing just that part. There is no way I can make the page print properly and still have it display properly on the web.
My son loves walnuts Jennifer. When he’s home for the holidays I’ll need to bake him a batch of these! They look so fluffy and delicious!
Thanks so much, Mary Ann :)
They look amazing. I will take a shot at trying them this Sunday morning. I have lots of walnuts both dark and light as they have been on sale this past week. One question. Would it make a difference if I use light walnuts or the dark ones?
Hi Pat, Either would work. I think the light might be nice in these muffins, but if you like a bolder walnut flavour, go for the dark :) Enjoy!