Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Pear Coconut Muffins

Posted by Erin Wilburn / 5 comments » / breakfast

Today’s guest post is by my good friend Beth of Eat.Drink.Smile.  Beth has been a huge help to me as I entered the world of motherhood.  She welcomed her own son earlier this year.  And believe it or not, way back when I took the photos for her to announce her pregnancy, I was actually pregnant myself but didn’t know it yet!  While having mommy-friends is always helpful, it has been especially fun to have someone doing it a mere couple months ahead of me.  A little more background info on Eat.Drink.Smile, Beth loves exploring new restaurants both in Nashville & out of town, and she shares those adventures on her blog.  But she’s also a great cook, and posts some amazing recipes for both food & drink.  Her “real job” is the senior marketing manager for Nashville’s classic candy, Goo Goo Cluster, which are sooooo delicious.  (Seriously, if you’ve never had one, go get a Goo Goo!)  Ok, without further adieu, here’s her post!

When life gives you pears, you make… well, you make a lot of stuff with pears in it!

My husband’s uncle (my uncle-in-law?) has a pear tree in his backyard, so last weekend he gave us a huge bag of pears. Like Erin, I’m a new mom, so I’ll be using some of them to make baby food, but I have a feeling I’ll also be coming up with pear dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner a few times over the next couple of weeks.

This recipe I’m sharing with you today was a way to kill two birds with one stone. Earlier this week, my real life job had me organizing a professional photo shoot. Well, at least the photographer and stylist were professionals. Me? Not so much. It was the first time I’d ever done anything like this, and since I was working with a very limited budget, I enlisted several of my friends and acquaintances to work as “models”.

With so many generous people volunteering their own time to help me out, I wanted to do something special as a way to say thank you. Everyone was going to leave the shoot with a gift bag of cool merchandise, but I thought it would be especially nice if I also had a homemade treat for them.

Thus, the Pear Coconut Muffins were born!

Great with coffee at the start of the day, and equally enjoyable as an afternoon snack, these muffins were a huge hit with everyone at the photo shoot. In fact, a couple of people even took an additional one home with them!

Print

Pear Coconut Muffins

Yield: 20-24 muffins

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar
1 ¼ vegetable oil
3 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla
1 ½ cups sweetened, flaked coconut
2 cups chopped pears
¾ cup chopped pecans
¼ cup brown sugar

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.

In a mixing bowl, cream together sugar and oil. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift together flour, cinnamon, salt and baking powder; add to creamed mixture. Add vanilla. By hand, fold in coconut, pears and pecans (batter will be thick).

Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups. Sprinkle the brown sugar evenly on top of muffin batter. Bake 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.