Maple and Walnut Biscuits

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These maple and walnut biscuits are a real melt-in-the-mouth treat with a cup of tea! I found this recipe in a book from an old series of the Great British Bake Off. I´d highly recommend that book, it has some really good recipes in it so I´ll leave a link to it for you here.

My sister recently came back from Canada and brought me some “real” Canadian maple syrup which I used in this recipe! But of course, any maple syrup will do, haha! You can find the recipe at the end of this post, but let´s start with a few tips for making these Maple and Walnut Biscuits.

These Maple and Walnut Biscuits Have A Great Flavour!

I love these biscuits! The maple syrup makes them lovely and sweet, and they have a buttery texture like shortbread (check out my recipe for Traditional Scottish Shortbread here)!

Toasting the walnuts in the oven for a few minutes before you use them really enhances their flavour – and the walnut pieces around the sides of the biscuits add a lovely bit of texture!

Speaking of walnuts, they are also great when incorporated into cakes to give a bit of texture! If you want to try out something like that, why not give my Best-Ever Carrot Cake Traybake, Spiced Carrot Cake or Mary´s Berry´s Frosted Walnut Cake with Boiled Icing a go?!

Tips for Shaping the Biscuit “Log”

The dough for this biscuit recipe can be quite soft and sticky making it a difficult to handle. The best way to shape a sticky dough into a log is to spoon the mixture onto a large piece of clingfilm, aiming for a rough line/log. Then, wrap the clingfilm around it and twist the ends (like a Christmas cracker), creating a kind of “sausage skin” around the dough. That makes it a lot easier to roll and shape the biscuit dough into a neat log!

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Then you can carefully open up the clingfilm again and roll the biscuit sausage/log onto the prepared baking paper with the chopped nuts. Using the baking paper, you can then roll the dough in the nuts until fully coated.

I use a similar method when making my Traditional Scottish Shortbread or Chocolate and Hazelnut Biscuits. Works every time!

Freezing some of the Maple and Walnut Biscuit Dough

A good thing about this recipe, is that you don´t have to bake all of the biscuits at once. As this recipe is slightly awkward to half, but makes about 30 biscuits, it´s quite good that you can keep some of the dough aside to bake another time. The biscuit dough will keep in the fridge for a few days, but you could also freeze any of the leftover biscuit dough. Wrap any leftover biscuit dough tightly in clingfilm once shaped into a log but before slicing. Then, when you want to bake, defrost the biscuit dough log in the fridge and then slice and bake as described below.

More Biscuit Recipes

If you want to check out some of my other biscuit recipes, I have listed some of my favourites for you below:

• Best-ever Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Chocolate and Hazelnut Biscuits
• Easy Iced Biscuits (with feathered icing)
• Traditional Scottish Shortbread
• Vanilla Crescents
• Mixed Nut Butter Cookies

Maple and Walnut Biscuits

Recipe

Ingredients (makes about 30 biscuits):

• 100g walnuts
• 5 tbsp maple syrup
• 225g slightly salted butter
• 55g light brown (muscovado) sugar
• 250g plain flour

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Tip the walnuts onto a small roasting tray and toast them in the oven for 5-8 minutes until they are lightly golden. Turn off the oven and leave the toasted walnuts to cool.
2. Measure the maple syrup into a small pan and set it over a low-medium heat. Bring it to a gentle simmer and leave it to reduce to about 3 tbsp. Remove from the heat and leave to cool whilst you prepare the remaining ingredients.
3. Put the cooled, toasted nuts into a food processor and blitz. You want to blitz them until they are a mix between small chunks and a fine powder. Don´t grind them for too long or they will turn into an oily paste.
4. Add the butter, sugar and cooled maple syrup to a bowl and cream together with an electric whisk (or wooden spoon) until smooth. Add half of the ground nuts and the flour to the bowl and mix well with a spatula or wooden spoon until fully incorporated.
5. Turn out the dough on to your work surface and roll into a log/sausage that is about 5cm in diameter and 30cm long. If the dough is quite sticky, do this with the help of clingfilm, explained in the tips above.
6. Scatter the remaining nuts onto a piece of baking paper and place the biscuit log on top. Roll the log back and forth until it is fully coated in the nuts (except the two ends). Neaten up the log and make sure it is a nice 5x30cm cylinder, then wrap in the baking paper, followed by some clingfilm.
7. Chill the dough in the fridge until firm, which will take about 4-5 hours. The dough keeps very well in the fridge for a few days, so you could leave the dough to chill overnight, or opt to bake half of the biscuits one day, and the remaining a few days later. You could also freeze some of the dough for another time (see tips above).
8. When the dough is fully chilled and you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 170°C. Line 2 large baking trays with some baking paper.

9. Use a large sharp knife to cut the log into round biscuits, about 1cm thick. Set the biscuits onto the prepared baking trays with a little space in between to allow for expansion.
10. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until the edges start to brown and the biscuits are a light golden colour. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the trays for a few minutes before transferring the biscuits to a wire rack to cool completely.