It’s spring! April showers, May flowers. Blueberries, apricots, currants, figs and of course raspberries! The original recipe uses pistachio’s, but since there was the whole pistachio recall recently I substituted in pecans. Speaking of substitution…the original recipe calls for dark brown sugar. I didn’t have any so I used light brown sugar. But afterwards I did a quick search online and found a useful tip for substituting dark brown sugar: mix 1 cup of light brown sugar with one tablespoon of molasses. Or one cup regular sugar with 2 to 3 tablespoons molasses.

Ingredients
Recipe courtesy of Tartelette
1 cup pecans, chopped, divided
1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed (NOTE: see substitution possibilities above)
2 eggs
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cups fresh raspberries

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350F. Lightly grease muffin tin
1. Using an electric hand mixer (or standing mixer), whisk together sugar and the eggs on medium speed, until thick, about 2-3 minutes.
2. With the mixer still running, add the butter, vanilla extract,flour, salt and baking powder. Increase the speed and whisk until just incorporated.
3. By hand, gently fold in the raspberries and half of the pecans. Divide evenly between the muffin tins. Sprinkle the remaining half a cup of pecans evenly over the cakes. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Voila!