Thursday, April 22, 2010

Pear Crisp


This dessert is very fast to prepare and tastes great. Before today I'd made many apple crisps, but never a pear crisp. This experiment turned out great though! Baking pears really highlights their natural sweetness, and the topping complements them wonderfully. A wide variety of fruits could be used here, and the spices can be altered to suit personal tastes and/or desires for experimentation! I made mine in individual ramekins but any baking dish (cupcake molds, a big or small square or rectangle pan, circular dish, etc.) will work as long as quantities are adjusted to fit your pan.
Serves 2

1 pear
2 t. cinnamon
2 t. allspice
2 T butter
1/2 c. oats (can substitute flour for some, if desired)
1/4 c. brown sugar

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Cut pear in quarters, remove core, and cut into a small ~½-inch dice. Mix pear in a bowl with 1 t. each cinnamon and allspice. Spread evenly into bottom of baking dish.
2. In the same bowl, mix together the butter, oats, brown sugar and remaining spices. Use a fork or your hands to make the mixture uniform and crumbly. Spread evenly over pears.
3. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until topping is golden. Ripe pears are naturally soft so you don't need to worry about cooking them through; you just want the topping to cook and turn golden brown.
fresh out of the oven
close up for texture's sake

1 comment:

  1. This was so tasty and elegant! The ramekins make a simple to prepare dish very elegant. I think there's lots of room to play with spices- could be interesting with ground ginger, allspice, chinese 5 spice.... lots of room for tasty variations.

    Also nice to have a reasonable portion- I'll eat an entire cereal bowl of apple crisp, which is sometimes too much, but one ramekins worth was the perfect serving size.

    what liquer did we have with this, G? It made a nice accompaniment.

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