I may just make these every Thanksgiving from now on. They are a perfect fall feeling snack. A perfect little snack for your fall brunch. They feel like a special treat over your plain ole muffins. Born and raised in the South, I love all things pecan.

I have read and studied so many different variations, of these muffins, that my head was spinning. I then decided to just dive right in and figure out what I wanted to serve at my house and take notes as I went.

Pecan Pie Muffins V1
printer friendly version

1 c pecans, chopped
1 c light brown sugar, packed
1/2 c flour
2 eggs
1/2 c (1 stick) butter, softened
1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350°F.
Fill a muffin tin with muffin liners.
In a large bowl beat the eggs until foamy. Add the softened butter and mix.
Mix in the sugar and vanilla, lastly the flour and pecans and stir only until moistened.
Spoon the batter into 9 regular size muffin tins, filling each cup 2/3 full.
Bake for 18-23 minutes, 20 minutes in my oven. Don’t over bake.
Remove muffins from pans immediately.

If you can stand the wait these are a bit easier to remove from the paper liners if you let them cool completely.

Mini Pecan Pie Muffins V2
printer friendly version

2 eggs, beaten
1/2 c butter (1 stick), softened
1 c light brown sugar, packed
1/2 c all-purpose flour
1 c pecans, chopped
1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350°.

Grease and flour 24 mini muffin cups. Baker’s Joy would be the easy way out, it combines flour in the nonstick spray. Don’t think about only using Pam, because of the sugar content in these muffins, you will have a mess trying to get them out.

I did more than chop my pecan pieces, in this version. I put them in a mini food processor and chopped them fairly fine, not as much as ground, but because I am making mini muffins, I didn’t want huge inclusions in them. This worked perfectly well.

Now stir together your dry ingredients, brown sugar, flour and pecans.

In a separate bowl beat the butter, eggs, vanilla together until smooth. Stir into the dry ingredients until just combined. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups. Cups should be about 2/3 full, mine seemed a bit fuller.

Bake at 350° for 15 minutes on until done, check them early, in case your oven runs hotter than mine. Pop them out of the the pans as soon as possible to prevent sticking. I had to run a knife abound the edges to “help” them out. Cool on a wire rack.

I have read you can grease your tins with butter, then sprinkle them heavily with sugar, as opposed to flour, and they will pop out even easier. Not sure if that is true or not, but it may lead me to try a third version! I’m betting they would have an even crunchier, caramelized crust that would be delicious, too!

Between the two versions, we settled on liking the mini ones best. You get a crisper crust, not using cupcake liners, which is delicious. The best part though could be that you get to eat two instead of just one. 🙂

I have not tested these using gluten-free flours, but because of the small amount of flour in them, I suspect they will work out well using one of the commercially available blends.

I suspect these will be found at my house over the Thanksgiving holiday. Maybe yours, too?

Speaking of Thanksgiving, can you believe it is in less than a week?? Where has the time gone?! Yikes!

Enjoy!!

Linking up with:
Think Pink Sunday
Sharing Time
Link Party Palooza
Weekend Re-Treat