Sweet Melissa Sundays: Pear and Blackbery Pie with Gingersnap Crumble

I almost didn't make this pie.  Even though I had bought a 6 pound bag of pears at Costco last weekend with the intention some would be used for this pie.  Then I remembered that I had a mini pie crust in the freezer from when the group made ginger pumpkin pie last year.  I also had some gingersnap cookie dough balls in the freezer too.  I had everything I needed and no real excuse.  Then I read Dawn's rave review and I knew it had to be done.  Thank you Dawn of Growing Up (And Having Fun) After 40 for hosting this delicious recipe!

I'm glad I got over my laziness and made this tasty pie.  The recipe calls for cranberries but I used blackberries because I had them on hand.  The pears have a very mild flavor and the berries added a nice tartness to this very sweet pie.  The gingersnap crumble adds a nice crunch and the spices pair well with the pears and berries.  This recipe is definitely a keeper. 

There are several steps to make this pie come together.  It would be best to make it over 2 days.  On day 1 make the pie crust, place it in your pie pan, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.  Make and cool the gingersnaps, process in the food processor to grind and place in an airtight container.  On day 2 assemble the pie filling and the ginger snap crumble topping then bake.

To get the recipe head over to Dawn's site.   To see other SMS baker's pies click here.

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Bosc Pear and Blue Cheese Savory Muffins

Today I tried new lighting for photographing my food. It wasn't actually intentional, but the light in the kitchen happened to be streaming in right when I wanted to photograph my results. I use a Nikon D5000 camera and 99.9% of the time I use the "Food" scene setting and usually get pretty good results. It's way easier than actually tyring to figure out apertures and F stops. I think the camera thinks if you are photographing food you are probably in a place with questionable lighting. So when I photographed these muffins with full sun using the food setting it came out with a completely different look then using the indirect natural light. The photo above is bathed in sunlight. The 2 photos below are indirect natural light.



The sunlight photo has a nice warm glow. I will have to play around with this and see if I can capture other treats in this nice light.


On to the muffins! Several months back I tried my first Sweet Melissa muffin recipe. The Sweet Melissa Baking book has a base recipe for both sweet and savory muffins and offers a number of variations on each. This was a sweet muffin--Strawberry. Unfortunately the muffins didn't turn out so hot. They were very dense and doughy. Inedible might be too strong a description but I certainly had no desire to eat them so they ended up in the muffin graveyard...my kitchen trash can. I took some comfort in later learning that other Sweet Melissa Sundays bakers had trouble with base muffin recipe too. I was curious how the savory muffin recipe rated. What better way to find out then first hand?

I made half the recipe and subbed sour cream in place of the heavy cream called for (as suggested by Andrea). I used skim milk in place of whole milk and I added several extra tablespoons of milk to get the batter to the right consistency. The savory muffin recipe has a little kick to it with black pepper (I used white) and cayenne pepper. I love the flavor of pear and blue cheese together so I was excited to try this out. I omitted the walnuts because I just don't care for them. I thought about subbing in pecans but I didn't have any on hand. So my muffins were nut-less.

These muffins are very reminiscent of a tender biscuit. They didn't turn out as golden brown as I would have liked. I did enjoy the cheese flavor, but the pear really got lost. The two peppers make this a spicy muffin. Overall, I wasn't lovin it. Another SMS baker commented that these would go nicely with a bowl of creamy tomato soup....and I agree. Eating them straight up didn't do much for me. However I have 19 more mini muffins sitting in my kitchen with only me to eat them. Hubby won't touch these with a 10 foot pole. I may swing by Fresh and Easy tomorrow and pick up a container of creamy tomato soup and give these muffins a second chance.


Thanks Andrea at Nummy Kitchen for selecting this week's recipe. See other SMS bakers muffins here.