Cardamom-spiced Asian pear chunks fill this rich-with-cream whole wheat muffin. It's a wonderfully sweet treat to celebrate Fall and serve to your favorite book group!
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These muffins are a mouthful to describe, but once you get it all out there should be no further need for description. I'll tell ya how I came up with them, though, and share where I served them.
The common thread is BOOKS.
My mom went to college in Canada and learned Home Ec [or whatever they called it back in the 50s that became Home Ec in the 80s that has become Family and Consumer Science these days].
Two of my mom's college friends wrote a couple of cookbooks, including one on muffins: Muffins: A Cookbook by Joan Bidinosti and Marilyn Wearring (Amazon Affiliate link)
. My copy, handed down from my mom, is covered with her scribbles "too sweet" "make 10 next time" etc. It's where I turn when I have an idea for a muffin but want some back up that it will work.
I picked up some Asian pears because they looked interesting, and this is the time of year I'm getting a handle on the farm share produce and can actually lift my head up in the grocery store and look around [instead of making a head-down beeline for yet another gallon of milk]. We enjoyed a few Asian pears fresh, but I wanted to play. I really don't know why I turned a Whole Wheat Applesauce muffin into these Asian Pear & Cardamom Cream muffins, but that's what happened.
I served these muffins to the women of my book group. We are a diverse bunch--united by a love of reading, a love of someone who at some point was in the military, and a possibly temporary geographic location of SW Ohio. Aside from that we're all different, and I love how varied our discussions become with each person sharing her perspective. It's good to hang out with people who are a different age than you, or don't have kids the same age as yours/don't have kids, or who don't hold the same job as you. And they are wonderful guinea pigs!
This is the last recipe I'm sharing from that one meeting at my house. Considering I'm hosting next month (we're reading Our Souls at Night and if my mom sends me the book in time I'll join in), I think I'm going to have future blog fodder (I'm already working up a braided sweet bread recipe). I've already shared my Slow Cooker Apple Chai for a Crowd, Roasted Sweet Potato and Turkey Sausage Breakfast Casserole, Cornbread, Roasted Chile and Sweet Potato Breakfast Casserole, and some other damn muffin that I can't remember right now. I make a lot of muffins, you see.
