Short and Sweet: Fig & Pecan Muffins
Photo courtesy of my new iPad mini!
On my to-do list this week: veg on the couch and go through the yellow milk crate overflowing with torn-out recipes I’ve accumulated over the past ten years or so. I miss the days of the torn-out recipe; looking through it’s interesting to see what I found worthy of tearing out and keeping years ago. What’s trending in my milk crate: doughnuts and shrimp dishes. Weird.
These muffins caught my eye because I had a little dish of chopped figs leftover from whoknowswhat sitting on my counter, and pecans for the fruitcake I never made. But the great thing about muffins is that anything goes – and when it came time to mix them up I didn’t feel like rooting around for wheat bran and germ, and added oat flour and oat bran instead, and they turned out divine; wonderfully tender on account of some of the flour being gluten-free. Of course these could be made with any combination of dried fruit and nuts.
Fig & Pecan Muffins

Preheat the oven to 375°F. In a large bowl, whisk together the flours and oat or wheat bran, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon or nutmeg; stir in the figs and pecans.
In a smaller bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, eggs, oil, maple syrup, and brown sugar; add to the flour mixture and stir just until combined. Spoon into 12 paper-lined or greased muffin cups.
Bake for 25 minutes, or until tops are golden and springy to the touch.
Eat warm.
Ingredients
Directions
Preheat the oven to 375°F. In a large bowl, whisk together the flours and oat or wheat bran, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon or nutmeg; stir in the figs and pecans.
In a smaller bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, eggs, oil, maple syrup, and brown sugar; add to the flour mixture and stir just until combined. Spoon into 12 paper-lined or greased muffin cups.
Bake for 25 minutes, or until tops are golden and springy to the touch.
Eat warm.
Isn’t that true about torn out receipes! I have a bunch (too many) falling out and over my recipe spot that I used to go through more often in hopes of trying or finding something new. Now I go to the internet first and my stack doesn’t get the use I had hoped for it. Are you throwing any away?
Torn out recipes! I was just telling my daughter-in-law about the stash of them I have – some from 1962 onwards! And I have a little hard cover notebook that I used to write good-sounding recipes in from library books I got from the library by mail in remote places I lived. I would write them down, determined to make them soon. Rarely have I ever made any of them, but when I look through in a resolution to throw them out, I still find some that look interesting and keep them!
These muffins, and yesterday.s scones, sound good!
Happy New Year, Julie. Is the iPad mini useful?
I LOVE this short and sweet format. For me, it is all about good recipes, not necessarily 354 pictures of the process. (because I am a weirdo.) keep it up!
I have a whole cupboard of torn out recipes – some I thoughtfully stuffed into duotangs (remember the duotang?) or shoved into binders, or when I was really on top of things, cut out neatly and taped into notebooks. I still tear out recipes and have a cork board I bought last year ready for me to “pin” them up so I don’t forget about them. Alas they probably fell behind the couch. Your short and sweet format is grand – I like it!
DH is a fig lover, I’ll be giving these a whirl for sure.
As for the recipes clipped out–I’ve started to scan the ones I like so I don’t lose them. Haven’t been able to give up the paper copies just yet 🙂
Hah! I have finally begun to go through boxes of pages I have torn out. It is so much faster to just search for the recipe on a website that look through that pile in my bedroom! I love muffins, and I do love that anything goes.
I love dried figs. Pinning now!
These are in fact fantastic ideas in about blogging. You have touched
some good points here. Any way keep up wrinting.