Because Everyone Needs A Little More

...sweetness. I will do you a favor and send some your way.

I've been a little hung up on this one muffin recipe lately, and so I thought that the best thing I could do with it was to pay-it-forward, because it's the kind of baked good that can change one's mood. This muffin is like Robert Pattison to a Twilight fan.

I found it by doing a random search for 'pear' and 'ginger,' since there was a time last year that I had a little too much of both. Not surprisingly, the recipe belongs to Nigella Lawson.

With the body of Venus, magic hands, an accent both engaging and comforting, and a proclivity for using terms such as 'tooth-achiness', 'palate-cleaving' and 'marshmallow-gungy,' Lawson has to be one of the most interesting and fun 'gastro-compendiums made flesh' around. All those other TV chefs look and sound entirely bland by comparison.

I especially like when when she bakes some exorbitantly rich cake, and the camera shows her replendent in her robe coming back for seconds after everyone else is asleep.

Here is the basic recipe, and then I'll tell you some of my inadvertent tweaks:

Nigella's Pear and Ginger Muffins

-Preheat oven to 400 degrees

-In a large bowl, mix 1 3/4 cup flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 3/4 cup white sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1 tsp ground ginger

-In another bowl, mix 2/3 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1 tbs honey, and 2 large eggs

-Fold into the dry ingredients

-Gently fold in 1 1/2 cups peeled pear, chopped into 1/4 inch dice

-Divide batter among 12 muffin cups, and sprinkle 1/2 tsp brown sugar over muffin tops

-Bake for 20 minutes, cool for a few minutes in the pan and then remove to wire rack.

You're welcome.

Okay, so last weekend when I went to bake these, I found I was completely out of vegetable oil. I was afraid to substitute olive oil because I thought the taste might come out a bit odd. So I went ahead and melted a stick of butter and used that in place of the veggie oil. Not surprisingly, the muffins were insanely good. A bit of extra saturated fat has that effect. And sometimes I feel like I can taste the vegetable oil in baked goods, so the lack of this taste was appreciated.

I've also used fresh ginger. But since I'm not sure of how much fresh ginger equals ground ginger, I just kind of winged it and think I added a couple of tablespoons. One of the things about grocery store ginger is that it almost always is quite stringy, so there were the occasional ginger strings in the finished product. It didn't, however, take away one bit from the luscious muffin and its ability to make my mouth really really happy.

I've also used low-fat sour cream, because I honestly can't tell the difference between the low and full-fat varieties anyway, but it struck me as hysterical melting an entire stick of butter and then using low-fat sour cream as some kind of lightening agent. Kind of like the diet coke with a Big Mac value meal.

Also, I would have taken a picture, because they're pretty with their brown-sugar crackled tops, but the last batch I made I took out of the oven right before going jogging, without removing them from the muffin tin, and the sides got a bit dark.

Which is just like me. There is at least one line from every recipe I try that I screw up.

But nevermind, because the taste is still divine, with the soft-baked pears and pungent ginger. As Nigella might say, 'this spice-laden squidginess' is the ultimate comfort food.