Have you tried incorporating pears into muffins? If you have not, I highly recommend you trying to make these light vanilla pear muffins. They are not as guilty as those butter rich pound cakes, yet still buttery. These lovely golden muffins are just super satisfying with cubed pear loaded in each. If you have a sweet tooth and are seeking something less guilty than pound cakes, you gotta try them!
Ingredients (makes 6 muffins):
- 1 Packham pear
- 85 g pastry/AP flour
- 30 g ground almonds
- 1 tsb baking powder
- 60 g butter
- 60 g+1 tsb sugar
- 1 large egg
- 60 g milk
- vanilla been seeds / pure vanilla extract
- sliced almonds
Instructions:
1: Peel and dice the pear. Place diced pear pieces into a small pan, add about 1tsb lemon juice, 1tsb sugar and pour water to cover the ingredients. Cook over medium heat, stir occasionally.
2: Cook until pear cubes become soft and shrink in size, set aside and let cool.
3: Combine room temperature softened butter, sugar and seeds of 1/3 vanilla bean or drops of pure vanilla extract. Beat butter until creamy and light.
4: Mix butter with beaten egg (room temperature) added in 4-5 additions. Make sure the egg liquid is fully incorporated into butter each time.
5: Combine flour, ground almonds, baking powder in a bowl. Add 1/2 mixed dry ingredients to the butter mixture.
6: Mix dry ingredients and butter at low speed. Pour in 1/2 amount of milk, combine and mix. Repeat steps 5&6.
7: Add prepared pear to the batter, fold it into the batter with a spatula.
8: Divide batter among muffin cups, top with sliced almonds. Bake at 180 C for 25-30 min ( or a toothpick inserted into one of the muffins comes out clean).
I personally think these light vanilla pear muffins are better served at room temperature after 1-2 days. The texture becomes more buttery letting muffins stand couple days in room temperature and taste of pear becomes more obvious.
Not too sweet, not too high in calories, aren’t they perfect?
Chinese version recipe here
Be your own pastry chef (click pic for recipe)
