SMS - Pear Cranberry Muffins with Gingersnap Crumble (late post)

I’m back to Sweet Melissa Sundays after being MIA for a few weeks, due to a kitchen remodeling project. Although we’re not fully done with our kitchen yet, at least the cabinets are installed as well as the counter top which gives me a functional kitchen for cooking and baking. We’re eagerly awaiting the installation of the floor and the backsplash which is scheduled for the end of November.

Now back to SMS. This week’s recipe, Pear and Cranberry Muffins with Ginger Crumble, was chosen by Jennifer of Maple N' Cornbread. Given the dense texture of the SMS Fresh Peach Muffins from a while back, I decided to tweak the recipe a bit as I like my muffins to be light(er) and somewhat fluffy. My changes can be found in the “Final thoughts/tips” section below.

This crumble is easily put together and is now one of my favorite recipes

As for the ginger crumble, I used tiny Dutch ginger cookies called “pepernoten”. The ginger crumble was very easy to make and was absolutely delicious. It is now one of my go-to recipes for crumble. This recipe makes more than you need so freeze what you don’t need (or make a batch of blueberry muffins like I did).

Yum, lots of crumble-topped-muffin-goodness

Here's an inside look. The pears and craisins added a nice fruitiness to the muffin.

The muffins turned out great; packed with flavor. The orange zest was absolutely crucial in my opinion. The aroma was just wonderful. I loved the ginger addition to the crumble so much that I added some to the muffin batter (along with the nutmeg) as well. I was very pleased that the muffins turned out light, tender and moist. In fact I liked the muffins so much that I whipped up another batch of “Fresh Muffins” from the opposite page; “Blueberry Orange Muffins”. For that I used the frozen leftover crumble. And for a small health kick, I added about 2-3 Tbsp of flax seeds to the batter. These muffins turned out equally delicious. The flax seeds add a nice nutty flavor and crunchy texture to the muffin.

I ventured off and made Blueberry Orange Muffins with flax seeds and some leftover crumble

Don't you love those tiny specks of flax seeds?

I highly encourage you to try these muffins, if you haven’t. You can find the recipe HERE. A big thanks to Jennifer for choosing this recipe. I enjoyed making (and eating) them a lot.

Final thoughts/tips:

• Hubby as well as some of my friends enjoyed these muffins a lot. The beautiful aroma from the zest and spices is the first thing that was commented on, followed by how wonderful the taste and texture were.
• My changes are: reduce flour to 2 ¼ cups (11 ¼ oz); use the zest of a whole orange; add about ½ tsp of ground ginger to the dry ingredients for the muffin batter; leavening: use 2 tsp baking powder and 1 tsp baking soda
• For the blueberry muffins, I substituted the ¼ cup of heavy cream with an equal amount of sour cream, added 2-3 Tbsp of flax seeds to the dry ingredients, and I used about 1 ¼ cup of frozen blueberries.
• Don’t forget to check out the blogroll to see other SMS bakers’ take on this recipe.