Who doesn’t love a nutty addition to their dishes? Think of the delicious flavor in your brownies, muffins, cakes, smoothies, and even your coffee!
Walnuts have one of the best nutty flavors, boasting a beautiful flavor that’s robust, complex, and earthy. Now, imagine that flavor paired up with a warm muffin or chocolate-based dessert – my mouth is already watering! Walnuts are just such a nice addition that’ll really level up many things, and walnut extract is one of the easiest ways to do this!
You can get walnut extract to conveniently add the delicious flavor to essentially anything you want without changing the dish’s texture or having to go shell some walnuts. However, it can be hard to get your hands on a walnut extract that tastes good, is high-quality, and doesn’t have a bunch of artificial ingredients…
And that’s where we come in. We’ve gone ahead and tested a bunch of them, and found some great ones that we’re happy to recommend! We’ve ranked our findings, so you can get right to enjoying the delicious walnut flavor today!
Let’s take a look!
What is walnut extract?
Walnut extract is a liquid that contains a very concentrated and powerful walnut flavor. It’s usually made by taking black walnuts, which boast a more intense flavor than English walnuts, and soaking them in an alcohol, such as unflavored vodka.
This is then left for a couple of weeks, during which the alcohol draws out the delicious flavor of the walnuts. The resulting liquid is then strained, leaving us with walnut extract! Some recipes include mixing the vodka with some bourbon whiskey, which gives the extract a little more of an oaky flavor!
Walnut extract is quite simply used to add the walnut flavor to different things, and can be used in many different ways…
How to use walnut extract in recipes
Walnut extract is used to add a nutty flavor to different dishes, usually bakes. This can include things like brownies, cakes, pastries, muffins, cookies, bread – the list goes on!
It’s especially great because it can be time-consuming to shell walnuts, and walnut extract takes less than a couple seconds to use. It’s very practical, and won’t change the texture of your dish like using real walnuts would. However, your walnut extract is also a great way to enhance the flavor of walnuts in recipes that call for the real deal!
You can also use it to add a nutty twist to your coffee or tea, with just a few drops giving you a ton of flavor! Or, try adding it to your ice cream, oatmeal, or yogurt!
Start with adding just a couple drops for most standard drinks such as coffee or tea, and flavor as desired. For standard baking batches, start with around 1 teaspoon, and add more or less until you get a flavor you want – it might take some experimenting!
3 great recipes to use your walnut extract
Try out your walnut extract in these delicious recipes:
- Walnut-flavored milk: You can take your walnut extract and combine it with your choice of milk (regular milk is likely the best for this), creating walnut milk! Now, this is only walnut-flavored, as you’ll need to blend actual walnuts and water together to make “real” walnut milk. That said, this can give your smoothies or morning glass of milk a great twist!
- Coconut dream cookies: This delicious snack could become a favorite in your household! Combining the delicious flavors of almond and coconut, adding a bit of walnut extract will enhance the nutty flavors found in these cookies!
- Decadent almond flour brownies: Brownies and nutty flavors go together like yin and yang. These particular ones call for almond extract, but you can either replace that with walnut extract or add about ¼ to ½ a teaspoon of walnut extract in addition to really bring out the nuttiness!
How to choose the best walnut extract
Finding the best walnut extracts can prove to be a little tricky, as there are a lot out there that use artificial flavoring. However, we like the real deal, so we’ve gone and done a bunch of research on top of making this list of criteria:
- Ingredients: Natural ingredients are the priority, as those are the best quality and best tasting!
- Consumer feedback: Customer reviews tell us a whole lot and give us a bigger perspective outside of our own experience with a product, helping us make a more accurate list!
- Track record: Reputation is everything, so we do a little background check on every brand to make sure that they’re aiming to make the best products and stay transparent!
- Price: You can get really expensive walnut extracts or more budget-friendly options – we’ve included a wide range!
Let’s jump right into the rankings!
#1 Best Overall: OliveNation
At the top spot is OliveNation walnut extract!
It’s rare not to see OliveNation amongst the top of the chart in our “best extracts” lists, and their delicious walnut extract has given them the number 1 spot here! It boasts a delicious flavor that tastes exactly like the black walnuts it’s made from, and you can tell that OliveNation took no shortcuts in finding the best ingredients.
On top of leveling up everything you throw this in, it comes in at the amazing price of $2.38 per fluid ounce, which is also the most affordable option on this list! It also boasts the highest customer rating with 4.6 out of 5 stars!
Definitely give this one a try!
Ingredients: Premium Alcohol, Glycerin, Water, Natural Flavors and Premium Caramel Color.
#2 Runner-Up: Larissa Veronica
Second place goes to Larissa Veronica walnut extract!
This brand has a great reputation, as they pride themselves on only using high-quality and premium ingredients. Larissa Veronica also only uses natural ingredients, and seeks to make affordable, pure, and delicious products.
And their walnut extract is absolutely delicious, boasting a great flavor that’ll have you reaching for the bottle over and over again!
You won’t be disappointed with this one!
Ingredients: Natural ethyl alcohol, natural flavors.
#3 Honorable Mention: Silver Cloud Flavors
Rounding out our top 3 is Silver Cloud Flavors!
You might know them better as Apex Flavors, and they’ve cultivated a great culture around their flavoring products. Silver Cloud Flavors walnut extract is a kosher product, which is potentially something you really need or want. Plus, it tastes great – although, it’s the most expensive option on this list at $5.39 per fluid ounce.
If you’re willing to spend the extra cash, this is an overall solid walnut extract!
Ingredients: Water, ethyl alcohol, glycerine and natural flavor.
#4 Best Imitation: Happy Home
We wanted to include an imitation walnut extract because some of you might have nut allergies, and therefore can’t have real walnut extracts.
This is a solid imitation walnut extract that tastes decent. It’s not the real deal, and we normally don’t recommend products with artificial flavors, but this is definitely a great option if you can’t consume walnuts but still want to enjoy its delicious flavor!
Ingredients: Artificial flavor, water, and propylene glycol.
Others we reviewed
As said, it’s hard to find walnut extracts that don’t include artificial ingredients. However, we don’t settle – we just look harder! And, we’re very happy with the ones in the rankings above – but not all the ones we tested made the cut.
Marshalls Creek Spices is one of those – it’s very well received, but unfortunately they decided to add artificial flavors. This is something we try to avoid if possible at The Coconut Mama, so we recommend you try the natural ones in the list above instead!
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