{earl grey, vanilla bean, poached & candied pears, make these cute cupcakes}

I’ve been working from home the past couple of days which allows me most excellent privilege of being able to bake something in the background. I park it right here at the kitchen computer aka headquarters, vpn into work, and launch my Slingbox player for entertainment, all with one eye on the oven.

For the poached pears, quarter and core 3 ripe pears leaving the skin on. Add to a pan along with two bags of earl grey tea, and 3 heaping spoonfulls sugar. Cover with water, and simmer lid on for about 20 minutes. Drain and let cool on a bed of paper towels. Scoop out the flesh of the pears and mash your harvest with a fork.

I used mini nonstick cupcake pans with no liners, I love making mini little bitesized things. Besides the size, these little treats packed a punch. Sweet poached pear moistened them up nicely and the real vanilla bean peppered throughout added beautiful texture and flavor.

Interestingly, when I was sniff testing all my teas, I discovered that Earl Grey smells exactly like Fruit Loops. You don’t have to tell me twice so off I went to the poaching liquid. I used a classic white cake recipe and then just stirred in about 3/4 c of the pear mash along with the seeds scraped from inside of a vanilla bean.

For the candied pears, place thin little sections of pear onto parchment paper, sprinkle with sugar, and bake at 300F until each piece is golden and caramelized. Then you can twist them into pretty little shapes to cool.

The icing was also a classic recipe using cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract. I went all out and actually used my pastry bag for this one. See the clumsy pretty swirls?


{tags pear cupcakes tea poached pears slingbox recipe}