Melt-In-Your-Mouth Cinnamon Pear Muffins

gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, vegan, soy-free, cane sugar-free

Procrastination.  If you’re a human, I’m sure you need no introduction.  Me and Procrastination?  Oh, we go way back.

The proof?  In the pudding.  Well, muffin, rather.  I meant to post this “Cinnamon Pear Muffin” recipe a few months ago (pears strike me as a somewhat autumnal fruit).  Then, I meant to post it a few weeks ago.  And now… well… I’m posting it… now.

What I find strange is that considering how much I dislike Procrastination, you’d think we’d stop hanging out.  You’d think I’d call this friendship quits.  You’d think. But I don’t think it’s that easy.  Procrastination isn’t just someone you can stop being friends with.  Procrastination is more of a sibling.  Even if you decided to cut that sibling out of your life, that doesn’t change the fact that the two of you have the same parents.

Quite the phenomenon, no?

Here’s where it gets even stickier:  We procrastinate when we have things we don’t want to do, yet we also procrastinate sometimes when we have things we actually want to do.  I think this happens because the things we want often require work.  More than work.  They require risk and vulnerability.  They cost us the act of putting ourselves out there.

Exhibit A: I have a blank sketch book and oil pastels sitting on my desk.  They’ve been sitting there for a few weeks now.  Every day I think, “I want to draw something pretty today,” and yet every day goes by without me drawing something pretty.

Exhibit B: I’m posting this recipe two months later than I intended.  I’m not saying there was any risk involved in posting this recipe.  It’s not like I used some edgy, controversial ingredients… These are not ink muffins.  Nor blood muffins.  (Sorry for that mental imagery delight.)  No, these muffins are 100% edible and 0% cannibalistic.

So why procrastinate?  Where is the risk?  Let’s put it this way: I look at each post as a graffiti artist might look at her newly-embellished subway wall.  Or something.  When I begin a new post, the risk lies in the potential fact that it won’t be as “good” as the last post.  Silly.

I guess that’s why Procrastination is in our lives and we can’t shake him.  He likes to get close to us just so that we’ll practice standing up to our sometimes-own-worst-enemy: ourselves.  He sulks around us closer and closer with the hope that we’ll gather up the nerve to tell him back off.  The hope that we’ll do – simply do. It’s a cycle, like most natural things are in life.  He shows us that the more time we spend waiting to do something perfectly, the more time we waste doing nothing at all.

To me, the most beautiful thing about it all is that Procrastination wouldn’t even exist if I didn’t have aspirations to create something more or be something more.  I guess that does make him a friend.

He is a reminder that all I really want to do is live.

Cinnamon Pear Muffins

1/2 cup almond flour

1 cup sorghum flour

1/4 cup tapioca flour

1 tsp salt

1 Tbsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

2/3 cup palm sugar (or 1/2 cup agave nectar)

1 ripe banana, mashed well

3 tbsp coconut oil

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup almond milk (1/3 cup if using agave)

2 heaping cups of sliced pears, 1/2″ slices/chunks

more cinnamon for sprinkling (this is ESSENTIAL)

1) Preheat oven to 350˚

2)  Mix dry ingredients.

3) Mix wet ingredients.

4) Add wet into dry ingredients and mix well.  Mix in pears last.

5) Fill one jumbo muffin tray with batter nearly to the top.

6) Bake muffins for 25-28 minutes.  If using a regular cupcake tray, bake 17-20 minutes.

7) While cooling, sprinkle cinnamon through a flour sifter on each muffin.  YUMMMM!