It may look a bit of a wreck, but that's only because the last of the batch got mauled before I had a chance to pap it in all it's muffiny glory. In actual fact I'm really pleased with how these turned out. I've joined the revival for seasonal eating, and with autumnal pears, ginger is a brilliant match. However as far as I'm concerned, ginger in baking needs the lightest of touches so I came up with the idea of poaching peeled pears in a sugar and crushed ginger syrup rather than adding ginger to the actual batter. It makes for a more delicate flavour.
As a basic muffin recipe base, I tend to use Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Lemon Curd Marble Muffin recipe, doubling the quantities of everything as I use a large muffin tin. I like HFW's recipe as I think the addition of yoghurt makes for a moist muffin. In this case I used honey flavoured greek yoghurt to complement the other flavours. And of course instead of lemon curd I used small chunks of poached pear. For this peel 2 large pears, core and cut into large chunks. Bring a small saucepan of water to boil with 2 cups of sugar and a large teaspoon of crushed ginger (I use the stuff that comes in an easy squeezy tube). Poach until just cooked, remove from the pot and put aside to cool while you prepare the muffin batter according to HFW's recipe. Mix in pear at the end before you spoon the mixture into your tin. It pays to keep an eye on these as they cook so that they don't burn. Things can go all pear shaped all too easily.
Sorry, but it is an HFW recipe, so I had to have a bad pun in there somewhere.
Yum!
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