Pair of Pear Muffins

It's been much too long since I made muffins.

I broke my blender a couple days ago, which means no more smoothies for breakfast. Until I buy a new one. Which I'm not looking forward to. I'm supposed to be packing because I'm moving at the end of the month. The last thing I should be doing is shopping for more stuff. I'm only going to have to put it back in the box in a couple weeks anyway.

Three days with no smoothies and I'm totally lost for breakfast in the morning.

I'm really not fond of eating on an empty stomach, but I'm okay with drinking. Chewing before I've had 2 cups of coffee is just weird. This is why I need smoothies. The rest of breakfast has to go into my backpack and get eaten during calculus lectures.

And what better to put in a backpack than a muffin.

Pear Pear Muffins

What you need:

• 1 c oatmeal, the quick cooking kind
• 1 1/2 c plain yogurt with a high fat content
• 1/4 c milk or pear juice (apple will do)
• 2 eggs
• 1 c grated pear
•  1/4 c melted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 c flour
• 1/2 c sugar
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 or 5 dried pears, diced small

What you gotta do:

Preheat the oven to 375.

So far so good.

In a medium bowl, mix the oatmeal and the yogurt. It will be lumpy. Once it's combined, let it sit for a few minutes while you do the next few steps.

If you have a coffee grinder, you can grind your own cinnamon and cardamom.

Yes, that is cinnamon. Real cinnamon. Those scroll-like sticks are actually a similar spice called cassia. But that will work too. It's always tough to estimate how much of a whole spice you need to get a ground spice, but I got about 1 and a half teaspoons of powder out of this so, I'm calling it close.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spice.

By now, your oatmeal - yogurt mixture will be resembling some kind of masonry mortar.

Add the grated pear, eggs, milk, vanilla, and melted butter. Make sure the butter isn't too warm; you don't want it to cook the eggs!

Mix this into a nice wet goop, and then dump it on top of the dry stuff in the big bowl.

If you can't find dried pears, try dried apples, or dried apricots.

Add those to the bowl too.

Now, muffin mixing instructions always say to barely stir until just combined and that lumps are okay... I don't like that. I like to make sure everything is combined, especially with this recipe because the "wet" component is really quite dry.

Stir until everything is combined. It will take quite a few turns of the spoon, but be gentle as you do it. You are stirring, now whipping or beating.

This makes a few more than 12 muffins. I overfilled my muffin cups (lined with papers since the quiche issue), and still had a bunch of batter left.

If you have a second muffin tray, you'll probably get about 16 if you fill them 2/3 full.

If you don't have a second muffin tray, you'll get 12 over-filled muffin cups and enough to make a giant muffin in an oven proof bowl.

Makes me think these would also work as a quick bread.

Bake the muffins at 375 (yup, preheated the oven) for about 20 minutes.

These are delicately spicey, which is good because pear can be a very subtle flavour, and too much spice will just overpower it.

They're also just barely sweet. Which makes it totally justified to cover that giant muffin with dulce de leche. What? I'm trying to clear out the fridge!

What food do you like to use more than once in the same recipe?