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?

Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies

I think we’ve just about exhausted the possibilities for mint chocolate chip desserts.  Seeley has made ice cream and cake, and now I'm doing cookies.  Ever since Hubby saw a picture of mint chocolate chip cookies online somewhere, he’s been wanting me to make them.  More than the mint and chocolate, I think it was probably the green color that caught his attention.  Initially, I had the fabulous idea of juicing mint leaves to use for coloring.  As it turns out, mint leaves don’t produce green juice, it’s brown.  Ok, perhaps not such a fabulous idea.  I thought about using spinach instead, like I did when I made these colorful cookies, but I was afraid the idea of spinach in mint cookies might turn people off a bit.  (Although, I can vouch for the fact that you can’t actually taste spinach juice in cookies.)  Anyway, in the end, I broke down and bought some natural food coloring. 

And for the mint flavor, I used this.  It’s just peppermint oil mixed with sunflower oil. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

• ½ cup butter
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon peppermint flavoring
• Food coloring
• 1 ½ cups flour
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup chocolate chips

 

Cookies come together fairly quickly, so go ahead and preheat your oven to 350° before you begin.  As usual, your ingredients need to be at room temperature.  If you didn’t plan ahead, see what to do here.  Drop your butter into a mixing bowl along with the sugar. 

Whip them together until it becomes light in color and fluffy.

Add the egg. 

Mix until the egg is completely incorporated, scraping everything down a time or two. 

Add the vanilla and peppermint. 

When those are incorporated, start adding your food coloring.  If you’re using natural food coloring, it will take way more than the scary artificial stuff.  I ended up using probably a teaspoon between the blue and yellow. 

Continue to add a little at a time until you arrive at a color you’re happy with. 

Add the flour, soda, powder, and salt. 

Mix until that comes together, scraping everything down again, then add the chocolate chips.  I took out a bit of my dough and added white chocolate chips because I love mint and white chocolate together.  For the rest, I used dark chocolate.  You’ll need a total of about 1 cup of whatever kind of chips you decide on. 

Fold those into the dough. 

Spoon balls of dough onto a parchment lined baking sheet, leaving plenty of space between them.  Mine were probably about 2 tablespoons each, which make cookies that are something like 3 inches across.

Bake at 350° for 12 minutes or so.  They should look dry on top and be starting to brown around the edges. 

The cool peppermint flavor mixed with the warm chewy cookie and the creamy, gooeyness (yes, that’s a word) of the chocolate is a perfect combination.

As for the color, I think next time I’ll go with spinach.  It really does give a better color than the food coloring. 

What mint chocolate dessert have we missed that you’d like to see us make?