Pear Muffins

These pear muffins are moist, well-spiced, and filled with lots of pear chunks. They make an easy and delicious fall dessert. They have a very tender crumb and crunchy walnut cinnamon sugar topping.

Ingredients

This blueberry muffin recipe uses regular ingredients that you will find in any grocery store (flour, eggs, baking powder, baking soda, yogurt, sugar, butter, vanilla, pears, walnuts, spices). I would only like to talk a little bit about the following ingredients:

Yogurt – it’s the key ingredient to moist muffins with a tender crumb. It’s way better than milk or sour cream. This recipe calls for plain yogurt and not Greek yogurt which is too thick for this recipe.

Spices – I used cinnamon and cardamom. Cardamom is optional since we’re not using it a lot and it’s not always easily available. Pumpkin pie spice would also be great here!

Pears – it’s better to use firm pears for this recipe but it will also work with ripe pears.

Sugar – I used a mix of white sugar and brown sugar. Brown sugar adds caramel flavor that works well with pairs and fall spices.

Butter vs oil – usually it is preferred to add oil to baked goods because it makes them more moist. It’s a good idea to add it to spiced cakes (like this carrot layer cake) or chocolate cakes where the difference in flavor is not that noticeable. These muffins are already very moist thanks to yogurt and lots of pears so adding oil is really not necessary! Butter adds here such a wonderful flavor.

For the best result, all the ingredients should be at room temperature but these muffins will also turn up fine if the ingredients are cold.

Topping for pear muffins

My favorite topping for pear muffins is a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon, and walnuts.

You could also make cinnamon crumble to top them: simply combine 5 tablespoons flour (45g), 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 cup light brown sugar (50g), and 2 tablespoons soft butter (30g).

Muffin pan

I used a standard-size muffin pan and got 12 muffins from this recipe.

You can also bake these muffins in a large-sized muffin pan – you will get about 8 jumbo muffins. You will need to bake them longer.

You can also use a mini size muffin pan to bake these as mini muffins – you will get about 18-20 mini muffins. You will need to bake them for a shorter period of time.

Before you start

This recipe is very forgiving and easy to measure with measuring cups but I would like to just bring to your attention how I measure flour. 1 cup of flour can weigh 120-150g, depending on how you’re filling your cup. I’m using the “spoon and level method” so 1 cup of flour in my recipes weighs 125g.

If you are measuring your flour by dipping the measuring cup in the flour container it is very possible that your cup of flour will weigh 140-150g (scooping the flour directly into the measuring cup compacts it so you have more flour in your cup).

Adding too much flour will result in dry muffins so please use my method of measuring flour or use a kitchen scale for a perfect result every time (you don’t have to weigh all the ingredients, just the flour, all the other ingredients are fine to measure with cups!).

To correctly measure the flour, you need to:

1. Fluff the flour by stirring it in the bag/flour container with a spoon.
2. Spoon the flour and sprinkle it into your measuring cup.
3. Sweep off the excess flour with the back of a knife.

How to make pear muffins step by step

Preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C/Gas Mark 5, no fan.

Cut pears into small cubes (you don’t have to peel them), set aside.

Prepare a muffin pan (standard size) and line it with 12 paper liners. Spray the liners with a non-stick baking spray (optional).

STEP 1: Add the butter, eggs, yogurt, vanilla, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cardamom, cinnamon, and both types of sugar into a large bowl.

STEP 2: Whisk until well combined.

STEP 3: Add the flour, fold in with a spatula until almost combined.

STEP 4: Add pears and walnuts.

STEP 5: Fold in with a spatula until evenly distributed and there are no streaks of flour visible. Don’t overmix the batter.

STEP 6: Divide the batter evenly between 12 muffin liners.

STEP 7: Make the topping: stir brown sugar with cinnamon and chopped walnuts.

STEP 8: Sprinkle the topping over the muffin batter.

Bake for about 25 minutes or until a wooden skewer/cake tester comes out clean.

Place on a cooling rack to cool slightly and enjoy!

Storage

These muffins keep very well, actually a lot better than my raspberry muffins or blueberry muffins. They will be also delicious the next day but I wouldn’t store them longer. Store them in a tightly closed container.

You can reheat them in the oven or in a microwave to refresh them.

How to freeze pear muffins: You can freeze these muffins for up to 6 months. Cool them completely then wrap each muffin in plastic foil and put in the freezer. Thaw in the fridge and warm up in the oven or bake at 320°F/160°C straight from the freezer until thawed and warm.

How to prevent muffins from sticking to liners

• The most important is to let the muffins cool before trying to take off the wrappers (cool them completely for best results).
• Spray the muffin liners with a non-stick baking/cooking spray or brush them with vegetable oil or melted butter.
• Use high-quality liners (some brands may stick more than the others).
• Buy non-stick wrappers if other methods are failing you.

More delicious muffin recipes

• Blueberry Yogurt Muffins (best blueberry muffins!)
• Raspberry White Chocolate Muffins
• Mango Muffins with Passion Fruit Glaze Recipe
• Pumpkin cranberry muffins

Did you make this recipe? RATE THE RECIPE or tell me in the COMMENTS how you liked it! You can also add a photo of your dish. It would make me very happy and will help other readers. Thank you!!