Make Ahead

pear-cardamom brown butter muffins

by:
February  3, 2011
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0 Ratings
pear-cardamom brown butter muffins
  • Makes 12
Author Notes

We love the small heat of cardamom, like a tiny roar at the back of the sweetness. Its warmth reminded us of ginger and cinnamon. And we love cardamom with pears -- dripping juice with a bit of savory flavor.

After all that, why not use brown butter? It has a depth that no golden stick of butter can offer.

These muffins have all those tastes, along with the molasses hint of teff flour, the nuttiness of almond flour, and the hearty taste of buckwheat.

Plus, they're gluten-free. —glutenfreegirl

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • 10 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 1 D'Anjou pear, grated
  • 1 teaspoon cardamom
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon ginger
  • 3 ounces almond flour
  • 3 ounces buckwheat flour (preferably not toasted)
  • 2 1/4 ounces teff flour
  • 2 ounces potato starch
  • 1 3/4 ounces arrowroot powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 6 1/2 ounces coconut palm sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 5 1/4 ounces whole-fat plain yogurt
  • 5 1/4 ounces buttermilk
  • 3/4 cup toasted walnuts
Directions
  1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease a muffin pan or line with muffin liners.
  2. Set a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the butter and let it melt, then bubble, then brown, swirling it around once in awhile. Do not let the butter burn. Turn off the heat.
  3. Add the grated pear, cardamom, ginger, and cinnamon to the brown butter. Stir them around to incorporate the brown butter into the ingredients. Set aside.
  4. Combine the almond, buckwheat, and teff flours with the potato starch and arrowroot powder in a large bowl. Whisk to incorporate and aerate the flours together. Add the baking soda, baking powder, kosher salt, and coconut sugar. Whisk again.
  5. Whisk the eggs, yogurt, and buttermilk together until they are fully combined. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the liquids. Mix with a rubber spatula until the ingredients are mostly combined. Add the pear mixture and crumble the walnuts into the muffin batter. Stir until everything is fully incorporated.
  6. Fill the muffin tins almost full. Slide the muffins into the oven. Bake until the muffins are browned with a bit of a crunch, the top springs back to the touch, and a knife goes through cleanly, about 25 minutes.
  7. Allow the muffins to cool in the tins for 5 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack. It's hard, but let the muffins cool for 15 minutes before eating.
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  • strozyk
    strozyk
  • onetribegourmet
    onetribegourmet
  • glutenfreegirl
    glutenfreegirl
  • Shana
    Shana
glutenfreegirl
Shauna writes about food. Danny cooks it. We grow excited every Saturday morning to go to the farmers' market. This time of year, a Billy Allstot tomato is enough to make us look like goons at the stand, jumping up and down with excitement. We will eat one slice with sea salt, standing over the sink. Another goes to our baby daughter. The rest might go into the smoker to make smoked tomato salsa, or thrown together with watermelon and good olive oil for a watermelon gazpacho, or stacked with smoked salmon and drizzled with horseradish sour cream. Every day is new. I have no idea what we're having for dinner tonight. But I'm sure interested to find out.

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6 Reviews

Shana
Shana January 8, 2015
These were amazing! I made a bunch of substitions because it's too cold to go to the store. Milk and lemon juice for buttermilk, greek yogurt, apple instead of pear, brown sugar instead of coconut sugar, and pecans instead of walnuts. They turned out perfectly! Thanks for another great recipe!
 
strozyk
strozyk February 7, 2011
These were scrummy! Thank you. It's lovely to see something gluten free over here, and even nicer to see something done by weight.
 
ellemarie
ellemarie February 5, 2011
BEST EVER!!!! Easy to put together (after having everything ready to go). Love them and need to figure out how not to eat the entire batch in one sitting. xoxo
 
karlynne
karlynne February 4, 2011
Sounds good but just a question about the recipe--are you measuring the yogurt and buttermilk by weight or volume? It just says ounces but 5 1/4 oz is an odd amount for something that is always measured by volume so I'm wondering if you chose weight measurement for some reason. Thanks.
 
glutenfreegirl
glutenfreegirl February 4, 2011
Karlynne, it is by weight. We actually weigh everything in our house for baking, since we have to weigh the gluten-free flours for accuracy. (They all have radically different weights, so you can't throw in a cup of one and expect it to substitute for the other.) Since the scale is out, we just weigh the liquids too. And it makes for less mess.

Our original recipe is in grams, so the buttermilk and yogurt would each be 150 grams. Since there is no grams option when writing the recipe here, I had change it to ounces! That's why the awkward measurement.
 
onetribegourmet
onetribegourmet February 4, 2011
Wow, Love the pairing of Pears with Cardamom! Lovely Recipe!