Pear and Chocolate and Almond Tart

During our Christmas celebrations, we made and ate a lot of pies, and this one really stood out and was a clear favorite with most of us. It is based on this recipe from the New York Times. I made it again for a work party, and conveniently remembered to take pictures also. This time I made it in a 9" springform pan because my pie dish was already occupied, so the crust is a little wonky, but that certainly didn't affect the flavor .

Chocolate Pear Almond Tart
3-4 pears, ripe but firm
juice of 1 lemon
3/4 cup sugar, divided
4 oz bittersweet chocolate
3 Tbsp butter, softened
2 eggs
1/2 cup almond flour
7 or 8 oz package almond paste or marzipan
1 pie crust, par baked (we used this sour cream pie crust - so easy)
Preheat oven to 350.

Prepare the Pears:
Peel, halve and core the pears, place in a saucepan, and cover with cold water, add the lemon juice and 1/2 cup of the sugar. Heat on medium to a simmer, let cook for 7-10 minutes, until the pears are just getting a little softer. You don't want them very soft because they will bake some more with the whole pie. Drain well.

While the pears are cooking, prepare the Chocolate Filling:
Melt the chocolate, add the softened butter 1 tablespoon at a time. Add the eggs 1 at a time, then stir in remaining 1/4 cup of sugar and the almond flour.

Assemble:
Roll out the almond paste to a circle the size of the inside of your pie crust, place on the bottom of the crust. Spread the chocolate filling on top. Slice the pear halves into long quarters (each slice should be about 1/8 of a pear) and arrange on top of the chocolate in a nice pattern. The 3 times we made this, we only ended up using about 2 1/2 pears total.

Bake for 30 minutes, the chocolate filling should get a little puffy and look dry on the outside.

Serve warm or cold, whipped cream makes it even better. Try to get a second piece before it's all gone. Make it again tomorrow.

A French Dessert

I get to come and visit the Motherdear and other family members for a bit, and so last night we all got together and ate lots of lasagna and then I made a dessert for everyone that I learned about in France a few years ago. You may remember a previous post about pear and chocolate tarts, and having this dessert in France was what originally made me aware that pears and chocolate are really really good together. Here's what it looks like:

Pears and ice cream with chocolate sauce

You need a good quality vanilla ice cream, put pear slices on it and top it with chocolate sauce or just melted semi-sweet chocolate chips. If you use chocolate sauce it will stay pliable and will be easier to eat and you'll be able to taste the chocolate more. Plain melted chocolate will harden immediately on the ice cream and you won't get the full flavor effect because of the chocolate being so cold and hard, but it will still be pretty good. Sister-In-Law had her's with cinnamon instead of chocolate and said that was very good together too. It is nice to use fresh pears, but they should be very ripe and smooth and not hard and crunchy and gritty. These pears were a little bit hard and gritty. Little Brother suggested that we warm them up and Older Sister suggested that we cook them with brown sugar so that they would be soft and even more delicious. That got me thinking, you could probably sprinkle pear halves with sugar and maybe cinnamon and cook them on the grill and immediately serve them in this manner and that would be pretty heavenly. Here is all of us (except me) together eating and being silly. Good times.

enjoying each others company and dessert

There are a few interesting things to note in this picture. First: isn't that table nice? Little Brother (on the left) made it all by himself in woodshop class in high school. I want one too! And we are all in the house that he and his wife just bought - isn't that great? Second: there is a green package sitting by Motherdear, which used to contain seaweed. Perhaps someday I will tell you about the awesomeness of seaweed and something you can do with it so that people will eat it without being weirded out. Third: there is this girl sitting by Older Brother who was very nice and we all liked her very much and it was very cool to get to hang out with her. We even saw them holding hands, so maybe we'll get to see more of her in the future.

Pear/Ginger Upside-down Cake

Every year at pear season I experiment with a pear and ginger cake recipe that I saw in a random cookbook from a craft store, and I couldn't get it to work like it looked in the picture. Somehow these people made a thick-ish batter and set pear slices on top and after baking the pears were still on the top of the cake. When I tried it the pear slices sank to the bottom and it wasn't very impressive. So then I tried a few mutations on the theme, trying to perfect a recipe (pear-fect, ha ha) to get the most flavor into the cake and make it beautiful. I've tried making a pound cake in a bundt pan so that the pears in the bottom of the pan will end up on the top when you take it out of the pan and it should be pretty, but it wasn't as satisfying as I thought it would be. And then I was talking to my dad a few days ago, telling him my plans for the hundred or so pears that I had getting ready for jamming, and I told him my dilema, the elusive cake recipe. He suggested doing it like a pineapple upside-down cake, because it's easy to find a trusty recipe. I tried it last week, and somehow this gave me the most flavor bang for my buck, and I think it looks pretty good. So, thanks Dad! This one is for you.

Pear and Ginger Upside-Down Cake
(Adapted from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book, 11th edition.)

3 firm pears
1 tablespoon finely diced fresh ginger
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon butter
1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

Peel, cut in half, and core the pears, coat with lemon juice as needed to keep them from browning while you work. In a skillet over medium high heat, lightly cook the pear halves with about 1 teaspoon of the chopped ginger until they are a gentle golden brown on the outside. This step is important for fresh pears to soften and cook them a little, as well as infuse them with the ginger flavor, but if you can't find good fresh pears (a struggle, I know) and opt for canned pears instead, you can skip it.
Grease a 9-inch cake pan, mix together the brown sugar and tablespoon of butter, sprinkle over the bottom of the pan. Arrange the pears, cut side down, on top of the sugar, and sprinkle the remaining ginger over all.
Mix together the flour, granulated sugar and baking powder in a medium size bowl. Add milk, the 1/4 cup butter, egg, and vanilla. Beat with an electric mixer on low for about a minute. Spoon the batter over the fruit in the pan.
Bake in a preheated 350 oven for 35-40 minutes until  a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for about 5 minutes on a wire rack, then invert onto a plate and serve warm. Eat any leftovers for breakfast tomorrow.

Jamming Time

Pears were on sale last week for really cheap, so we bought at least 30 pounds of pears and I made a lot of jam yesterday and today, and now I have a strange callous on my hand from paring so many pears. I did a bunch of pectin-free batches, and I did about 4 batches with the kind of  pectin that uses less sugar. It all turned out well. The first couple of batches made with pectin set up really hard, I think because the pears were less ripe at first. I let them sit with a banana in a warm place for a day before doing the next ones with pectin. The pectin-free pear jam, unlike the pectin-free boysenberry jams I did a couple months ago, turned out a little more like syrup than jam, although some of the pectin-free jams set up more, depending again on the ripeness of the fruit. I was really excited to do some fun flavor combinations because pears are nice and mild and like being eaten with all sorts of spices. I have been planning on doing pear and ginger for a while, it's a combination that I experiment with every year during pear season (see my pear and ginger upside-down cake, recipe coming soon!). It is delicious, but the other combination I tried was even better: pear with cardamom. It is like heaven on a piece of toast, on a hotcake, mixed in with your oatmeal for breakfast, and probably warm over vanilla ice cream. I can't give you the recipe because I think I might start selling it. Yes, it is that good.

In the picture from left to right: Pear with cardamom and other spices, Pear with ginger and cardamom, Pear with ginger.

Pear and Chocolate Tartlets

Last weekend in Italy we found some pear and chocolate pastries, which we just had to get for breakfast because pear and chocolate is one of my favorite unlikely flavor combinations. These pastries had bits of pear inside with chocolate melted all over it, all wrapped up in puff pastry and dusted on the top with powdered sugar mixed with cocoa powder. It was pretty good, but there was (you may not think this is possible...) too much chocolate and it overwhelmed the taste of the pears. I decided to make my own pear and chocolate tartlets to see if I could do as good or better, and this is what I came up with. It is super easy to prepare the elements days ahead of time, then bake when needed. you could even bake just two at a time. It would be simple to increase the amount or vary the size or shape of the tartlets as desired.

Pear and Chocolate Tartlets

Pie crust dough (enough to make a 1 crust 9-inch pie)

3 pears, not too ripe

milk for brushing on pastry crust

granulated sugar, to taste

about 1/2 chocolate sauce recipe

Roll out pie crust dough into a large rectangle, about 1/8 inch thick. Keep the dough chilled for maximum flakiness. Cut dough into 6 rectangles, each about 5 x 3.5 inches, depending on how large your pears are. Use any excess dough for pie-crust cookies. Place rectangles on a lightly greased baking sheet, and score part of the way through pastry dough with a knife 1/2 inch inside of the edge. Brush a little milk onto each rectangle. Peel the pears, core and cut into 1/2 inch slices (10-12 slices/pear), cover generously with lemon juice to keep them from browning. Place slices of pears on the rectangles of dough, one half of each pear on each rectangle, keeping the pieces within the score marks. Sprinkle a little sugar on each tartlet, only about 1/2 teaspoon on each. Immediately place the baking sheet in the preheated oven at 400 F. Bake for about 20 minutes, till the edges and bottoms of the crusts are brown, and the juices have coagulated. Remove from baking sheet and let cool for at least one hour. Scoop chocolate sauce into a piping bag (or a sandwich bag with a hole in a corner to squeeze through). Squeeze a drizzle of chocolate sauce on top of the tartlets, not too much. Enjoy!