Vanilla Pear Muffins

Pear muffins made with pear sauce, sliced fresh pears, and a big hit of vanilla in the batter. Golden brown, tender, and incredible enjoyed warm from the oven.

Travel always sneaks into our kitchen, and these muffins are a delicious souvenir from Paris. We rented the tiniest apartment, and every morning, the bakery downstairs filled the street with the smell of fresh muffins—different flavors every day. But it was the vanilla pear ones that stole our hearts.

For these easy muffins, you’ll stir pear sauce (just like applesauce, but with pears!) right into the batter, then top each muffin with a few slices of fresh pear. The kitchen will smell amazing, and the first bite is even better. For more, see this list of 12 muffins recipes, all of which hold a special place in our hearts.

Key Ingredients

• Pears: We add pears in two ways in this pear muffin recipe—pear sauce in the batter and fresh-sliced pears on top. Pear sauce is just like applesauce, but made with pears instead of apples (they are usually sold next to one another). If you can’t find any, use applesauce. For the slices on top, use any ripe pear.
• Flour: In most of our muffin recipes, we stick with all-purpose flour, but a 1:1 gluten-free blend should work here.
• Baking Powder and Soda: These help add lift and airiness to the muffin batter. Use both.
• Vanilla, Nutmeg, and Salt: We are heavy-handed with the vanilla in this recipe. You’ll add quite a bit to the batter, and then use it again to make a simple vanilla sugar for sprinkling over the top. Nutmeg adds a really lovely warm flavor, and salt seasons everything nicely.
• Lemon: No juice, but a little freshly grated zest brightens the muffins’ flavor.
• Butter: The muffins we tried in Paris were definitely made with butter, so that’s what we’ve done here. Unsalted butter is perfect. If you only have salted, omit the salt called for in our recipe below.
• Brown Sugar: Brown sugar adds a toasty flavor to these muffins rather than typical granulated sugar. That said, you can substitute plain granulated sugar if that is all that you have.
• Granulated Sugar: You don’t need much, but we highly recommend making our vanilla sugar in our recipe below for topping the muffins before baking.

Find the full recipe with measurements below.

How to Make Pear Muffins

Tip 1: Make vanilla sugar for the tops. We make flavored sugar a lot in our baking recipes (see these peach muffins and blueberry scones as examples). For these muffins, we rub a little granulated sugar with vanilla extract to make a simple vanilla sugar. Then we save it for sprinkling over the muffins right before baking.

Tip 2: Take care when measuring your flour. For a perfect batter every time, pay close attention to how you measure your flour. We’ve found that using the “fluff and spoon” method prevents a heavy, dense batter.

Fluff the flour in its container with a spoon. Lightly spoon it into your measuring cup until it’s slightly mounded. Then, use the flat edge of a knife to level it off. Or, for the most accurate results, use a kitchen scale to weigh the flour.

Tip 3: Mix the batter by hand. These are pretty simple to make, so there’s no need for an electric or stand mixer. When making muffins, we like to mix our dry ingredients in one bowl, whisk the wet ingredients in another, then gently fold the two together. You aren’t beating them together, just stirring until you no longer see any streaks of flour. This gentle method keeps your muffins light and tender.

Tip 4: Press fresh pear slices into the tops. This is my favorite part (and the real nod to those French muffins I mentioned). Just before baking your muffins, fan out a few thin slices of fresh pear and press them into the top of the muffin batter. Sprinkle a little vanilla sugar (recipe below) over the top, then bake. As the muffins bake, the pears caramelize and sweeten a little. I love it!

More Easy Muffin Recipes

• Vanilla Peach Muffins
• Lemon Blueberry Muffins
• Strawberry Muffins
• Pumpkin Muffins