Marzipan muffin with pear and cardamon

I "won" the right to bake cake for my work colleagues in our X Factor (Danish Idol) cake competition, as my participant got voted out as the very first participant at the TV show Friday evening. It was exact the same situation last year. The good thing is, that I will have "free" cake for the coming weeks to come, until end of March.

I found this recipe on marzipan muffin with pear and cardamon in the weekly newsletter from Aarstiderne. As I could not find my grounded cardamon among all my glass with herbs and pieces, I decided to ground cardamon kernel in my new coffee bean grounder. This just smelled sooooo great, and I have been smelling to the coffee grounder the entire day in the kitchen.

Normally I have not been very successful with using melted butter in previous muffin recipes, which I have tried. So fare I have been having a preference for using oil. Until now I only facing issues with melted butter crystallising again giving a lumpy texture, when mixed into the milk as many muffin recipes describes. However, it worked perfect this time, as the melted butter first were added after the wheat flour had been mixed into whipped milk, sugar and egg.

The ratio between sugar and marzipan is also just perfect in this recipe, as the sweetness level is just right. Many times I have experienced over sweet taste, when working with marzipan in cakes and muffins.

The combination of lemon zest and cardamon is excellent. The pear flavour is very, very difficult to pick up, but pear is also quiet mild in it's flavour.
Hannibal the cat is not a great fan of the noises from from a working coffee grounder, as they woke him from from his midday nap.



Ingredients:

• ½ teaspoon cardamon
• 125 g butter
• 1½ dl milk
• 1 egg
• 125 cane sugar
• 225 g wheat flour (cake version)
• 1 nip salt
• 1½ teaspoon baking powder
• 100 g marzipan
• 2 pears

• 1½ teaspoon lemon zest

1. Melt the butter in a cooking pan and cool it down.
2. Whip milk, egg and sugar together in a bowl.
3. Add wheat flour, salt, baking powder and cardamon in the whipped part of the muffin mix.
4. Stir it together. Add the melted butter and stir it together to a homogeneous muffin mix.
5. Ground the marzipan and add it to the mix.
6. Cut the pears into smaller pieces and add it to the muffin mix.
7. Fill into muffin form.
8. Bake at 200C for 15-20 minutes.