The Cookbook Club- Nigella Christmas Pumpkin Pancake with Sticky Maple Pecans

Joanne Tracey over at Brookford Kitchen Diaries has started up a monthly cookbook club and the rules such as they are are loose enough that it's easy to follow along and participate. 

This month we were asked to try to find Nigella Christmas. Having read Joanne's fictional novel and blog(s) for years I have heard a lot about Nigella but never thought to look for one of her cookbooks before. I was so surprised to find the book through our interlibrary loan program.

It's a beautiful book and I learned a whole lot about different English traditions and food. But if I'm honest I had a hard time finding a recipe to use! That's not to say we didn't find any we liked but I had no need to cook up a cheesecake or a whole ham or anything like that. 

My boys and I finally settled on making the pumpkin pancakes with sticky maple pecans. 

 

Here is a video I found with Nigella making this recipe! 

I did have to sort of "translate" the recipe from the metric measurements into the "American" measurements I'm used to (and I think I messed up a bit because my first few pancakes were a bit wet and I went back in to add some more flour and dry ingredients. Which if I had watched that above video first I would have known since my batter was much thinner than hers. 

But I got them right the second time around and while they were cooking I turned to making the pecans. 

 They were incredibly easy, but ours looked much wetter and stickier than hers did in the video. We loved them though so I'm not complaining!

Now my boys and husband all added more maple syrup but I don't like maple syrup so I ate mine plain wit just a few nuts on top. 

We all thought they were pretty good but I did think they were missing something. If I were going to make these again I'd add cinnamon, some nutmeg, and probably even some clove. I feel those "pumpkin pie spices" really bring out the warm pumpkin taste. 

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