Spiced Ginger Pear Muffins Gluten-Free

Spiced Ginger Pear Muffins (Gluten-Free)

I love Costco. That love, however, means that I tend to have large quantities of fruits and vegetables, all the time. Today, I have pears. I love pears! 

Apparently, I am feeling affectionate for many things today.

But, my pears are not going to last very much longer. Therefore, I decided to try and create a new recipe using up these delightful pears, before they go bad.

A few hours later, which included a trip to Target during the Christmas week rush, because I ran out of eggs, I have created a gluten-free recipe for muffins.

Don't run out of eggs on Christmas week. #holidayhappiness??

A photo posted by Mary Opatz (@meogto) on Dec 21, 2016 at 9:08am PST

Sadly, when I was at Target, I thought I was working on a cookie recipe. Now, I have to go BACK to Target and get some muffin cups to bake these up*.

Baking them up without the muffin cups has been successful. Natalie exact words were, "I can't believe I have eaten three of these, already!"

*We tried making these up as mini muffins in muffin liners, but the dough is just too sticky to remove from such a small muffin liner so we ended up using a mini loaf pan with 8 mini loafs per pan, and it worked great.

Spiced Ginger Pear Muffins (Gluten-Free)

INGREDIENTS

1 cups all purpose gluten-free flour

1⁄2 cup oat flour

2 cups rolled oats

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup raw sugar

1/3 cup white sugar

1⁄2 cup dairy-free butter

1 1⁄2 cups chopped pears (2 large pears gave me just a smidge over 1 1/2 cups)

1/4-1/2 teaspoon lemon juice (to keep pears from browning)

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon zanthan gum

1⁄2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoon ginger

Raw sugar, for topping

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 F degrees.

Peel fresh, ripened pears and purée them in a food processor. If you do not have a food processor, grate them up with a cheese grater or chop them into ¼ inch squares. Smaller, if possible. Add lemon juice to bowl, and stir to cover all of the pears.

You can use canned pears if fresh pears are unavailable.

Drain out excess liquid just before adding to sugar mixture. I used a strainer lined with a coffee filter to drain excess liquid from my puréed pears.

Beat egg and dairy-free butter together in large bowl or stand mixer. Add raw sugar and blend until well mixed. Add puréed or chopped pears and continue blending on medium. Add vanilla.

Separately, mix all purpose gluten-free flour, baking soda and salt together. Add rolled oats to dry ingredients. 

Beat dry ingredients into pear mixture. Mix until well combined.

Fill muffin tin level with top of pan. Oil pan if not using muffin liners.

Sprinkle top of muffins with raw or decorator sugar, if desired.

Bake for 27-30 minutes. Cool in pan for a few minutes and then move to cooling rack to finish cooling.

Makes about 1 dozen muffins.