Caramelized Pear Gingerbread Muffins #MuffinMonday

With buttery pears and aromatic rich ginger batter, these caramelized pear gingerbread muffins make a lovely breakfast or snack for the holiday season. 

After some soul searching and then consulting with the other members of my Muffin Monday baking group, this post will be my last official Muffin Monday one. That doesn’t mean that I won’t occasionally share a muffin recipe though. I love creating and baking them far too much to give it up entirely. 

I had to go back and count the Muffin Mondays I’ve shared a post for from way back in June of 2012, for a total of 264 muffin recipes! (One a week for three years then one a month since 2015.) Not to mention the links on my posts to fellow bakers’ recipes. It’s a treasure trove of options! See them all here.

But since this is the last official post, I decided that something out of the ordinary was warranted. Something rich and decadent, yet easy to achieve. And definitely a muffin that fit the season. No partridge but a pear and gingerbread! 

Caramelized Pear Gingerbread Muffins

If you don’t have a suitable pear, these would be lovely with an apple caramelized and added in the same manner. 

Ingredients

For the caramelized pear:

1 ripe but firm pear

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon brown sugar

For the muffin batter:

2 1/4 cups or 280g flour

1/2 cup or 100g sugar

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

1/2 cup or 120g butter, melted and cooled

1/2 cup or 120ml molasses or treacle

1/4 cup or 60ml milk

 

Method

Peel, core and cut your pear into thick slices.

In a nonstick skillet over a medium high heat, brown the pears in the butter, turning them over in the pan to color both sides. 

Add in the brown sugar and cook for a few minutes, until the sugar melts and bubbles and coats the pear. 

Remove from the heat and leave to cool. 

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by greasing with butter or non-stick spray or lining it with paper muffin cups.

 

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

Cut the caramelized pear into pieces and set aside 12 pieces for topping. Mix the bigger pile into the flour and toss gently to coat. 

In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, butter, molasses and milk.

Pour your wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold them together until just mixed.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.  Top each with a piece of the reserved pear.

Bake in your preheated oven about 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  

Cool in the pan for a few minutes and then remove the muffins to a rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!

It’s the last Monday of the month so that means it’s time for Muffin Monday. I am so grateful to my fellow bakers for sticking with me all these years. Please check out the links below and go show them some love!

• Banana Buttermilk Muffins from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Blueberry Streusel Muffins from A Messy Kitchen
• Caramelized Pear Gingerbread Muffins from Food Lust People Love
• Cardamom Cinnamon Muffins from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Cassava Flour Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins from Passion Kneaded
• Maple French Toast Muffins from Jolene's Recipe Journal
• Wheaties Muffins from Palatable Pastime

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who have gotten together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page. 

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Pear Crisps

A delightful baked snack and so easy to make, these pear crisps are crunchy, naturally sweet and flavorful. Put out a bowl and watch them disapPEAR. 🍐

Every holiday season, we are gifted with a box of apples, oranges and pears. The apples and oranges get eaten but often the pears languish in the refrigerator since they aren’t really anyone’s favorite fruit. 

But now I’ve found a way to make sure they are enjoyed! Thinly sliced on a mandoline and baked in a slow oven, they come out crispy and delicious. Plus, bonus! If they don’t get eaten right away, they are good for quite a while, stored in an airtight container. 

Pear Crisps

These don’t have any additional ingredients because adding sugar, even a sprinkle, tends to make the pear slices sticky and harder to get crispy. You could add a sprinkle of ground cinnamon which doesn’t affect the moisture levels, if you are so inclined. 

Ingredients

Just-ripe firm pears  – I bake two at a time which fit nicely on my two large pans, once sliced

Method

Preheat your oven to 248°F/230°F fan or 120°C/100°C fan and prepare your baking pans by lining them with baking parchment or silicone liners. 

Trim the bottom of the pears. 

Hold the stem end of each pear and slice (about 1mm thick) as uniformly as possible. This is easiest with a mandoline. You will end up with the little stem ends as the cook’s bonus to eat while the slices bake. 

Lay out the pear slices on the prepared baking pans ensuring that none of the slices are overlapping.

Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, turn the pear slices over and return them to the oven for a further 1 hour. 

After they have finished cooking, turn the oven off but leave the pans in the oven for a further hour so the pear slices become fully crisp. 

Once completely cooled, the pear crisps should be stored in an airtight container, to keep them crunchy.

Enjoy! 

It’s Sunday FunDay and today we celebrating National Pear Month. Many thanks to our host, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. Check out the links below. 

• Arugula and Pear Salad from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Brûléed Posset-Filled Pears from Culinary Cam
• Gluten free Frangipane Pear Tarts from Sid's Sea Palm Cooking
• Pear and Cherry Sourdough Bread from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Pear Crisps from Food Lust People Love
• Protein Packed Winter Veggies & Fruit Salad from Sneha's Recipe
• Roasted Pear & Beet Salad from Amy's Cooking Adventures

 

We are a group of food bloggers who believe that Sunday should be a family fun day, so every Sunday we share recipes that will help you to enjoy your day. If you're a blogger interested in joining us, just visit our Facebook group and request to join.

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Spiced Pear Muffins #MuffinMonday

These spiced pear muffins are light, fluffy and full of fall flavors. The aroma as they bake is wonderful and will make your whole house smell fabulous. 

If you’ve been reading along here for a while, you know that the last Monday of every month is Muffin Monday. I get together with a group of bakers and we share muffin recipes. 

This month, I brought these to the vet clinic that helps Lone Star Boxer Rescue and our partners Austin Boxer Rescue with our pups as a thank you for their service all year round. I also brought some homemade peanut brittle. We love them and couldn’t rescue the dogs we do without their help, so I wanted to bring them an extra special Christmas treat! 

Spiced Pear Muffins

If you don’t have sugar crystals or demerara sugar for the cinnamon sugar topping, you can substitute regular sugar. This recipe is adapted from one on A Baking Journey.

Ingredients

1 medium pear

1 2/3 cup or 200g flour

1/3 cup or 70g brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 eggs

1/2 cup or 120ml canola or other light oil

1/2 cup or 120g Greek yogurt

Cinnamon sugar topping (optional, but highly recommended)

1 1/2 tablespoons demerara sugar or sugar crystals

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. Line your 12-cup muffin pan with paper liners or grease the pan well with oil.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices. 

Peel, core and cut the pear into small pieces. If you cut them too large, they tend to sink to the bottom of the muffin batter. 

Add the pears pieces to the flour mixture and stir to coat. 

In another mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, canola and yogurt until smooth.

 

Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture.

Fold until just combined. 

Divide the muffin batter between the cups in your prepared muffin pan. 

For the cinnamon sugar topping, if using, mix together the sugar and ground cinnamon in a small bowl. 

Sprinkle some of it over each muffin.

Bake for about 20-25 minutes, or until puffed and golden. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.  Place the muffins on a cooling rack. 

Serve warm or at room temperature. 

Enjoy! 

As I mentioned above, it's Muffin Monday, the very last one of 2022! Many thanks to my fellow bakers. Please check out the recipes we are sharing below.

• Ham and Cheddar Corn Muffins from Palatable Pastime
• Peppermint Mocha Muffins from Magical Ingredients
• Sourdough Hot Cocoa Muffins from Zesty South Indian Kitchen
• Spiced Pear Muffins from Food Lust People Love

#MuffinMonday is a group of muffin loving bakers who get together once a month to bake muffins. You can see all of our lovely muffins by following our Pinterest board. Updated links for all of our past events and more information about Muffin Monday can be found on our home page.

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Wild Pear Lemon Preserves

Juicy pears cooked down with a Meyer lemon and just the right amount of sugar make the best Wild Pear Lemon Preserves! They are a wonderful topping for buttered toast, stir them into yogurt, or warm and spoon them over vanilla ice cream. 

Last summer I got a text from a friend asking me if I had any interest in some wild pears that were growing on her property in the country. Free fruit? Yes, PLEASE! If there is one thing I absolutely love, it’s making jam or preserves out of fruit that might otherwise go to waste. 

The best part was that I didn’t even have to pick the pears! We were all social distancing, like everyone worldwide last summer so my friend dropped the basket of pears on another friend’s porch for me. I duly collected them with much appreciation. 

I brought the basket of pears home and got busy peeling and slicing and cooking them down with sugar. If you’ve never tried a wild pear, I’m here to tell you that they are quite sour with a thicker skin than normal eating pears. But they are fabulous in preserves and, like quince, they turn the most wonderful shade of pink. 

Bonus advice: If you do not yet have a digital scale, please buy one. They are so useful! Using cups to measure sliced fruit is such a challenge because of air pockets. That said, I tried my best to measure the sliced pears so you don’t have to. Each cup of sliced pears is about 150g, in case you need to convert from the amounts below. It’s just a ballpark figure so you’ll see that the sugar doesn’t work out exactly in cups. If you'd just get a scale, you could save us all a lot of grief. 

Wild Pear Lemon Preserves 

I followed the guidance on a post from Digging Food to figure out the ratio of pears to sugar. One batch of my pears (1880g whole) weighed 1252g after being peeled, cored and sliced so I put 626g of sugar. If you don’t have wild pears, use firm green ones instead. These quantities of pear and sugar require one whole lemon. Adjust accordingly if you are cooking more or less pears.

Ingredients

For peeling the pears:

2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice or 2 teaspoons citric acid

For the preserves (my second batch! Those two trees just kept on giving!):

4 lbs 2 1/3 oz or 1880g wild pears

3 1/8 cups or 626g sugar

1 Meyer lemon (or sub a regular lemon) 

Method

Fill a large bowl about to about halfway with cool water. Add the juice or citric acid and stir well. Peel all the pears.

As you peel them, put them in your bowl with the acidic water.  This will stop the oxidation so they don’t turn brown. 

Cut all of the pears in half and use a the paring knife to remove the stem and bottom of each half, dropping them back into the acidic water as you do. Finally use a melon scoop to remove the core, again putting the pear halves back in the water.

Initially I tried performing each action on one pear at a time but it was tedious to continually switch tools and went much faster when I halved them all, then took the stem and bottom out of each, then cored them. It does mean you have to fish around in the acidic water to get them to do the next step but that’s quickly accomplished.

Peel and slice the pears 1/8 in or 3 1/2mm thick, again, popping them back in the water. 

When they are all sliced, drain off the acidic water and weigh the pears. Add in 1 part sugar for 2 parts pears. Cover the bowl and leave them to macerate overnight. 

Sitting around overnight in the sugar, the pears will create their own syrup and be ready to cook into preserves by morning. 

Just before cooking thinly slice your lemon (peel and all) but remove any seeds. 

Add the lemons to the pear pot. 

Bring the mixture to a high simmer or low boil over medium heat. Stir often! If the simmer is too low, it will take you 4 hours to cook them. A large batch usually takes at least 2 1/2 hours.

Start checking for desired consistency after 1 1/2 hours. Stir and check them every 15-20 minutes. The preserves are finished when the pears have turned rose, then to light garnet colored and the slices are transparent. 

The amount of cooking time varies depending on the size of your batch, diameter of your pot, the heat retention of your pot (Le Creuset are great for this) and the thickness of your pear slices.  

Wash canning jars and have them ready and hot. I put teaspoons in each jar and then fill them with boiling water. Pour a little boiling water over the lids while you are at it. Use a pair of canning tongs to tip the water out of the jars when the preserves are ready. 

When the preserves are done, use a wide mouth funnel and ladle the hot pears and syrup into the hot jars. Try not to get any on you as the pears and their syrup will burn you. 

Remove the spoons from the canning jars and fit the lids on as tightly as you can. Turn the jars upside down and leave to cool. Occasionally, as you randomly pass by, tighten the lids a little more.

Once the jars are cool, turn them right side up. The lids should pop down firmly. If any jar lids don’t suck down, store them in the refrigerator and use them first. 

Enjoy! 

August is National Canning Month so my Festive Foodie group are all sharing way to preserve Summer's bounty! Check out the links below. Many thanks to our host, Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm. 

• Homemade Sauerkraut  by Palatable Pastime
• How to Freeze Basil in Olive Oil  by Savory Moments
• Indian Style Refrigerator Bread and Butter Pickle by Magical Ingredients
• Tart Cherry Preserves  by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Wild Pear Lemon Preserves by Food Lust People Love

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