Lovely fall cupcakes as a thank you...

Jeff and I wanted to thank our realtor, Lori, for all of the hard work she did helping us look for and negotiate our new house in Minnesota. What else was I going to do but bake... right? It took me forever to pin down what I wanted to do though.

I didn't feel like cookies would be special enough, but I thought a cake might be too much. I did want something fallish, so I decided to make these Maple-Walnut Cupcakes with Candied Walnuts. It made 24 cupcakes so we had enough leftover that we could have a couple and also share a few with the neighbors!

With a light golden batter, the buttery cupcakes get a nutty punch with a full cup and a half of chopped toasted walnuts. While there is no maple in the batter, it comes into play with a luxurious maple buttercream frosting that shrouds the top of the cupcake. The frosting is just three simple ingredients - pure delicious maple syrup, egg yolks and butter. Using just the yolks alone gave the buttercream an irresistible smooth richness that made it fantastically hard to keep from taste-testing.

To tie in with the walnut theme of the cupcakes, we decided to adorn the cupcakes with a single candied walnut half. This is done by making a quick amber caramel (sugar, water and a drop of fresh lemon juice) and dropping the walnuts for a second to coat. When your making them, be sure to watch the caramel mixture with an eagle eye as it can go from a light amber to burned in no time. When you pull the walnuts out, you need to work quickly as the caramel will begin to set, but try and get off as much of the extra molten sugar that you can so you don't get pooling around the bottom of the walnut. You will have some extra caramel leftover, so go crazy and drizzle swirls on a piece of parchment or a silpat to make a fun crunchy candy to top of some of the cupcakes.

Recipes
Maple-Walnut Cupcakes with Candied Walnuts