Hi Mel! This is probably a bit late but mixed spice is a spice blend routinely available in Australia/NZ/UK supermarkets – made up of cinnamon, coriander seed, caraway, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, allspice, and mace.You could substitute with a blend of a few of those spices.

Oh these will be amazing this weekend! And they are definitely not a tricky/fiddly recipe so a good place to start.
For your questions – yes I think whole milk will mostly likely be fine – I haven’t tried it personally but can’t imagine the change would be too drastic. You could also just take out a tablespoon or so of the cup of milk and add water to thin it slightly.
Bread makers are pretty different so I would knead by hand – just allow yourself a bit more time or rope in family/friends to take turns kneading! It will probably take 10-15 minutes.
Hope that helps and would love to hear how you go!

Do you think I could use whole milk? Usually I’d just substitute it without a second thought, but I’m not a bread baker & don’t want to mess it up.

I don’t have a stand mixer, only a hand mixer (don’t worry, I know that won’t work!) and a bread maker (which I’ve only ever used to make pizza dough). Do you think I could use the dough function, or would that yield tough results? Would I be better to knead by hand?

Hi Kitty, I’m so sorry that it didn’t turn out well for you! I made these a few weeks ago at Easter and kind of had a similar problem, but not to the same extent – I found the pears were a bit wetter than when I had made it previously too. I think the issue for me was that my pears were very ripe, so they became a bit mushy in the oven, whereas previously I had used quite hard pears which dried more in the oven. I will note this in the recipe, and perhaps using ripe pears the roasting step can be missed. Do you think this might have been the case for you?
I’m so sorry this happened to you! x