Recipe: Pear Champagne Cupcakes with Pear Pie filling

This yummy recipe is for Pear Champagne Cupcakes with Pear Pie Filling and Champagne Frosting. My husband loves these; he can eat about four in one sitting. They're a little bit labor-intensive, but totally worth it! They're sweet to very sweet (and can be made extremely sweet). The base recipe is from YumSugar's Bubbly Pear Cupcakes. I made some minor changes and added the filling. The recipe says it makes 24 cupcakes but I've only ever gotten 18 - you need to make the cupcakes slightly bigger so that there's enough room for the filling.

Bubbly Pear Cupcakes
Cobbled together by YumSugar

For cupcakes:
2 3/4 cups of flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2 sticks of butter
2 cups sugar (brown or white)
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla (or 1 pack vanilla sugar)
1 cup champagne
3 firm-ish but ripe pears, peeled, cored and grated - I usually just puree the pears since it makes for a moister batter, but don't bother peeling them because I buy organic

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. In a small bowl sift flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
3. In mixer (or large bowl), cream butter and sugar until well mixed and airy
(If the butter is really cold, you're going to make a mess. If it's too soft, it's not going to work. Leave it out for a little while before mixing, but not long enough so it goes runny)

4. Add eggs, one at a time, making sure each one is full incorporated before adding next.
5. Slowly add in flour mixture making sure it is fully incorporated.
6. Stir in vanilla and champagne.
7. Stir in pears.
8. Line a cupcake tin with cupcake liners.
9. Scoop an even amount of dough into each cup. (You can overfill them since they have to be big enough to fill. Remember to put a bit of water into any empty cups.)
   
10. Bake for about 16 minutes. (Check on them after about 10 - our oven heats unevenly so I had to rotate the tray after ten minutes, and it took 2o minutes to bake.)
11. Remove the cupcakes from the oven and allow to cool for few minutes before removing them from the tins and allowing them to cool completely.
    

While the cupcakes are baking, you can make the filling and the frosting.

For frosting:
8 oz cream cheese, softened (whole fat!)
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar (sifted)
2 tbsp champagne

Whip the cream cheese, sugar and champagne until smooth.

YumSugar also calls for 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened, but I don't think you need it and I think it makes the frosting too rich. But if you like buttery frosting, go ahead and add it. I found that if you use butter you can get away with low-fat cream cheese (but what's the point, really, if you're adding butter?), but if you're not, then you really need full-fat cream cheese, because otherwise the frosting will be too runny.

They also call for 3 or more cups of sugar. I think 2 1/2 cups makes a mighty sweet frosting, but if you have a real sweet tooth go ahead and add as much as you want. Just keep tasting until you like it!

If you don't add butter, refrigerate the frosting until you need it, so it has a chance to firm up again, otherwise you may find that it is too runny.

For filling:
2 pears, cored and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup champagne
1/4 cup sugar

Bring pears, cornstarch, champagne and sugar to a boil over low to medium heat. When the mixture thickens, remove from heat and let cool. Really keep an eye on this - pie filling without the pie is not an exact science.

You're looking for a gooey, pie-filling consistency. I have used breading flour or normal flour in lieu of cornstarch. Sometimes 1/4 cup is enough, sometimes it's too little or too much, so start with a bit and keep adding it until you get the mixture right. Don't add too much or you'll get gloop!

You can also add a pinch of cinnamon and some lemon juice if you like.

To assemble the cupcakes:

Take a sharp knife and cut a cone out of the top of the cupcake. (I find that removing a cone works better than just cutting off the top and scooping out a hole, since that makes the top much harder to reapply - you have to use frosting as glue and it can get rather sticky.)

Use a teaspoon to scoop out some more of the body, but not so much that the cupcake falls apart. You can usually get about a square inch out and still maintain the integrity of the cupcake. (I usually eat the scooped out cupcake. You could also discard it, but it seems like a waste. It's pretty yummy).

Take the cone you cut out of the cupcake and trim off the tip. (Eat that as well!)

Teaspoon the filling into the hole. Don't fill it up the whole way. Take the top of the cupcake and replace it. Depending on how much filling you've added, you may have to trim off a bit more of the cone.

Top with frosting. You should be able to apply it so that you can't see the seam where the top of the cupcake was cut out and then put back in. That way when you serve them to your friends you can keep mum about the filling, and they'll be in for a yummy surprise! Repeat with remaining cupcakes. If you run out of filling you can fill them with icing, but then you're off in excruciatingly sweet territory.

Here's a video if you're confused (no, the filling shouldn't be that runny, but I ran out of starch :))



Serve, and enjoy!