I cannot get enough of blueberries.

Let me rephrase that: I cannot get enough of blueberries in stuff. In all the baked goods. Definitely in smoothies. Maybe on porridge. But I don’t go out of my way to eat them by the handful.

Maybe that will change this spring as those little suckers should be popping out everywhere in a few weeks. This only a new love of mine, postpartum.

Blueberries and curly hair. How the times are a-changing.

That’s about as exciting as my life gets.

Over the last few months, I have been OBSESSED with Marco Canora’s blueberry and buckwheat buttermilk pancakes in his cookbook, A Good Food Day. Although I do confess to never having had buckwheat flour when I make them so I’ve always substituted teff flour. It’s an addiction.

It’s gotten to the point that when I say we’re having pancakes for breakfast, my oldest groans and pleads for them to be any other type than the blueberry ones.

Fine, more for me.

I also love banana bread and my favourite recipe is from Ambitious Kitchen.

I had a few problems this morning though: I didn’t have bananas but wanted something baked. I didn’t want to make pancakes but I wanted baked blueberries. I had ripe pears and I wanted muffins.

Behold, these were born.

I combined two of my favourite recipes into one to make the most delicious breakfast muffins.

They aren’t overly sweet, which is what I look for in a morning muffin. I want something hearty, not a cupcake. Cupcakes are for afternoons, obviously.

And the tiny pop pop pop of the teff is divine. Like a lemon poppy seed muffin, except it’s little whole grains adding calcium and fibre.

These are the second type of muffin I’ve made using ripe pears as a base! Believe it or not, pureed pears work beautifully in any type of recipe where ripe mashed bananas are used. You may need to pump up the spices a little as they have little flavour of their own, but their texture and sweetness is wonderful.

Pear and Blueberry Muffins Makes 12

3 ripe pears, pureed in a blender
2 eggs
1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted and cooled

1 cup sprouted spelt flour (or any whole grain flour that you like)
1/4 cup fine corn meal
1/4 dry teff*
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
Dash of salt
1 cup frozen blueberries

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Prepare a muffin tin in some fashion: coconut oil, non-stick spray, cupcake liners. Your choice. Just do something if you don’t want to be scraping muffin scraps out of the tin after.
2. Mix the pears, the eggs, the yogurt, the vanilla, the maple syrup, and the coconut oil in a large bowl.
3. Mix the flour, corn meal, teff, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in another bowl. When combined, dump the dry ingredients into the wet and mix until almost fully combined.**
4. Add in the blueberries. Stir just a few times to get them incorporated and to finish the mixing.
5. Spoon into your prepared muffin tin for 20-25 minutes until a toothpick poked in the middle of one comes out clean.
6. Cool long enough to get it out the tin and feel free to munch right into it making hashashasha sounds as steam escapes your mouth. Or cool for a few minutes before removing from the tins and eat like a sane person.

They will keep for 4 days in the fridge or freeze for however long muffins stay frozen in your house. I don’t actually think any ever actually make it into the freezer in my house which is why I’m constantly making muffins.

*Feel free to use whole teff or teff flour. If you bought some to make my Lemon Berry Oatmeal Pie, here is the perfect place to use it. Or if you buy it for this recipe, look at that, you have another recipe to use it in as well. Or just sub in 1/3 of a cup of whatever whole grain flour you were using.
**If your muffins are ever tough or brick-like, chances are you over mixed. You only need to mix until almost no dry flour is visible. A flew little flecks here or there is okay if it means you don’t then over mix trying to get them worked in. Continually mixing the batter starts working the gluten in the flour which is why the end result is hard— think bread: its kneaded and kneaded to get that gluten all worked up into a stiff structure which is not the texture you want for soft muffins. Take your time and be gentle!

I hope you all are doing okay! This last week of ours we took a much needed hiatus from school work and my work and all things tedious to just enjoy the sunshine and hike hike hike.

Was it ever good for our souls. And our mental health. I feel like all this is weighing so heavily on our 6-year-old so I’ve been trying my best to ease up her workload.

My parents have always said that they are so glad they aren’t in my shoes trying to parent in today’s day and age, but I don’t think anyone could ever foresee just how complicated things have now gotten.

Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Snuggle and kiss and don’t forget to smile.