The sweetness of pears and slight tartness of raspberries make a lovely combination.  Add a little bit of vanilla yoghurt to bring it all together and the result is an incredibly moist berry packed muffin. Each muffin has over ½ serve of fruit, not that I’m recommending muffins be eaten instead of fruit!  ‘Packham full of pear and raspberry muffins’ they really should be called, since I did use the Packham pear variety in the recipe!

Packham full of pear and raspberry muffins

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients

2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

½ cup brown sugar

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 eggs, lightly beaten

¼ cup sunflower or canola oil

½ cup vanilla yoghurt (I used Jalna low fat vanilla)

3 ripe pears, grated or alternatively you can stew and puree the pears (2 cups)

2 cups frozen raspberries

Canola spray oil

Steps

• Preheat oven to 160°C
• Mix flour, bicarbonate of soda, sugar and cinnamon in a large bowl
• Lightly whisk eggs in a smaller separate bowl, add oil and yoghurt and mix well
• Stir egg mixture and pear into flour mixture and until combined
• Line muffin tray with paper cups and lightly spray with oil
• Spoon mixture and distribute raspberries evenly between muffin cups.  I prefer doing this instead of combining the berries into the mixture earlier as it stops the berries colouring the whole mixture.
• Bake for about 20 minutes or until an inserted skewer comes out clean
• Allow to cool and then take a big bite…

Per muffin

898 kJ, protein 5 g, total fat 6.4 g, sat fat 1 g, carbs 31 g (sugars 15.5 g)

Note

I actually made two half batches to see if there was any difference when the pear was grated, or stewed then pureed.  My partner happily did a blind tasting and noted that one was ever so slightly softer (stewed and pureed) but both tasted the same.   So in short, grate, puree, do whatever works for you 🙂