Every Wednesday night I hang out with my gal pals and watch Glee! This week I volunteered to make dessert for the season finale (waah). Last week I made my sausage soup that ended up in my friend’s driveway. Don’t ever think you can put a pot of soup in a tote bag. It didn’t work….and somehow I figured it wouldn’t. Why did I insist on it anyways?
Oh yeah- Dessert- Glee-Pears-I digress!
So I spied Deb’s Vanilla Roasted Pears and was like seriously obsessed with making them. I printed out the recipe and had it up on two computers…salivated over the pictures and read the recipe over and over… I’ve been stocking up on pears lately because Coop loves them! So I went to fish out that one vanilla pod resting in the big ass jar in my pantry and boy was it measly!
I decided to postpone the roasting idea for a time where have a good stock of vanilla bean pods. Which hopefully will be soon. I didn’t think that little runt would have done those pears justice.
So I regrouped and found an excellent & easy recipe for poached pears in The Art of Simple Foods by Alice Waters. I really don’t know why I’ve waited this long to try poaching pears. It’s really simple!
The ease of making them makes me super happy because I get really irritated at the waste involved in buying poached pears. There’s like 2-3 dinky pears that float around a big ass can/jar!! I am totally going to eliminate soo much wasted destined for my recycle bins!
So here’s how easy it is:
Peel all the pears
Scoop out the bottom of the pear with a tiny ice cream scoop
You want to make sure the seeds are gone:
Throw those bad boys into your poaching liquid and poach ’em!
Poached Pears
(recipe from The Art of Simple Foods, by Alice Waters)
- 4 cups water
- 1 1/4 cups sugar
- zest and juice of 1 lemon
- 4 medium pears (I used Bosc)
Bring water & sugar to a boil in a heavy bottomed pan. Turn down to a simmer and add the lemon rind & juice. Scoop out the small blossom end of each pear and put the pears into the barely simmering sugar syrup. Add more water if needed to cover the pears. Cook them for 15-40 minutes depending on the ripeness, until tender and translucent but not soft. Test with a sharp paring knife at the thickest part of the pear. Remove from the heat and cool.
After I poached the pears, I whipped up a Gingerbread Cake from the Trader Joe’s Gingerbread Cake mix I had in my pantry. I wanted a very thin layer of cake so I poured the batter into a 9×9 brownie pan instead of the 8×8 suggested.
I made a creamy topping out of Greek yogurt, a splash of almond extract, honey
and a dash of cinnamon!
I cut up some of the cake, topped each slice with half of a pear. I then put a dollop of the yogurt on top of the pear and sprinkled each dessert with some Spicy Maple Glazed Nuts.
It was soo good! Judging from the ooohs and ahhhhs I believe the girls loved it! If you make those spicy nuts, make sure you warn people ahead of time that they have a kick.
Enjoy!
