Recipe: Pear Ginger Muffins

by Debbie Sullivan April 20, 2016

I baked up a batch of these muffins for the March knitting tea, and had the best of intentions to post this recipe directly afterwards. Life got in the way (as it sometimes does) and now we're closing in on the end of April  - better late than never, right?

A few years ago I had a really fun job building model sets for The Fruit Hunters, a documentary about fruit and the people who dedicate their lives to it. I learned a lot of random fruit facts (ask me someday about the origins of the Clementine or the Hass avocado), but one of the most useful tidbits was about pears.

It turns out that pears actually need to be picked green and ripen off the tree. That makes them a good fruit choice for this time of year, when we're past the best of the citrus and pomegranates and haven't quite gotten to fresh berries or summer fruits yet. It's not completely foolproof, but I've found that imported pears are much more likely to end up sweet and juicy than other fruits like nectarines or plums.

These muffins are a great way to use up pears if you find yourself with extra, or if they ripen a bit too much before you get to eating them. They also work well with apples if you don't happen to have pears around.

Ingredients

•  2 cups chopped pears (or apples)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup oil (I usually use canola oil for baking)
• 1/2 cup yogurt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole wheat cake and pastry flour (all-purpose whole wheat works well too)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp salt

Topping (optional)

• 2 tsp melted butter
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 350° and grease muffin tins.
2. Beat together sugar, egg, and oil. Add yogurt and milk and blend well.
3. In a separate bowl mix flours, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon and salt. Add to wet ingredients and beat just until blended.
4. Fold in pears or apples. Spoon batter into muffin tins.
5. For optional topping, melt butter and stir in brown sugar and ginger until crumbly. Sprinkle over muffin batter.
6. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Makes 12 large muffins.

muffins with optional crunchy topping, ready to go in the oven

The ginger flavour in these muffins is quite mild, you could add extra ground ginger or a tablespoon or so of freshly grated ginger root if you want to give them a bit more of a kick!

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