pastry-wrapped poached pears

don’t ask me how i found this site, but these pastry-wrapped poached pears just looked so pretty, i had to give it a try.

now, if you followed that link, you might have noticed something interesting about the site. it’s in hungarian. and i no speak hungarian. even google translator had trouble with it. crazy language…

so i did my best to imitate the recipe. i’m sure i didn’t get it exactly the same, but mine were still tasty and almost as pretty.

i started with three pears. three pears for three diners.

i peeled the pears and added them to a pot of red wine, mulling spices, the juice of half a lemon and about a tablespoon of sugar. (they don’t turn out sweet at all, so if you want sweet, add more sugar here!) if you don’t have mulling spices, add cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, etc. and add enough water to cover the pears.

bring mixture to a simmer and cook the pears until when you stick a knife in them they are fairly soft. however, you don’t want to get pear mush…

take them out of the wine and let them cool as much as you can.

then roll out a sheet of pie crust or puff pastry (i used pre-made, frozen pie crust) as thin as you can get it and still be able to handle it. cut the pastry into thin strips, about a third of an inch, and begin wrapping around the pears from the very top.

don’t overlap your strips too much, but do make sure they are touching and stuck together well. continue down the whole pear.

stand the pears up in a baking dish, and toss them in the fridge while you preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

i also mixed the juice of half a lemon with some confectioners sugar and drizzled it over the top at this point as a sweet little glaze.

bake the pears at 425 for about 20 minutes,

then lower the heat to 375 and continue baking another 20 minutes or until the crust is a nice golden brown.

even though my crust fell a little, they are pretty impressive-looking, right? and delicious, too!

whiskey caramel sauce (for apple pie)

as you know, i have made my share of rustic fruit pies, but after a recent apple picking trip i decided to try my hand at a good old fashioned, two-crust, mom-style, cool-in-a-window-sill apple pie.

honestly, i was so nervous i didn’t pick up my camera until the end.

ta DA!

check it out!

okay, so it wasn’t the bestest pie ever in the entire world and there’s always room for improvement, but (if i do say so myself) it was an impressive first go.

and what does one need to serve apple pie with? why, whiskey caramel sauce, of course!

my recipe wants you to melt a cup of sugar in a heavy sauce pan, and warns not to stir, but SWIRL the pot.

this took FOR-EVER.

swiiiirrrrl

when it’s all melted, you are supposed to add a cup of hot water. i added half a cup of hot water… and half a cup of whiskey.

careful, the sugar bubbles up like crazy when you add liquid!

pour over apple pie!

probably pretty good over vanilla ice cream or in coffee or hot apple cider, too!

coconut impossible pie

when i first saw this recipe, i have to say i was intrigued. impossible pie?! try me!

that and the fact that i would eat a shingle if there was enough coconut on it, meant i had to give it a whirl.

the recipe calls for bisquick and sounds so totally retro that i had to do a little research. turns out, when my mom was a young bride in the ’70s, she had an impossible pie in her repertoire – a zuccini and cheese impossible pie. and the new mrs. b apparently made bacon impossible pies as a child, as well (by now we’re in the ’80s).

moreover, bisquick still promotes recipes for impossible pies on their website (of every flavor! shrimp! cheeseburger! french apple! taco! 45 in all!) but some p.r. guy must have told them that “impossibly easy pie” sells better. has our country completely lost its sense of irony?!

because how much easier can you get? one bowl, eight ingredients…

start by dumping everything into a medium bowl: 2 eggs (beaten), 3/4 cup sugar, 3 tablespoons melted butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 cup milk, 5 tablespoons bisquick, 1 cup sweetened flaked coconut and half a teaspoon of salt. mix well.

then pour it into your buttered 9-inch glass pie plate.

talk about easy… i even baked it in the toaster oven! (350 degrees for 30 minutes)

the original recipe wants you to then throw your pie under the broiler now for 5 minutes to brown the top, but i think the toaster totally took care of that for me, don’t you?

the poster of this recipe swore the pie would make its own crust. now, maybe i did something wrong… or maybe my definition of crust is different than her’s… but i would describe the result more as a thick coconut custard than a pie with a crust.

needless to say, whichever way you slice it, it was very very tasty (with a pleasing browned, chewy top like a giant macaroon) and even a guy who doesn’t like sweets had seconds!

[editor’s note: this recipe was adapted from tasty kitchen.]

crisp

fruit crisp is a go-to comfort dessert in my family when i was growing up. it was generally not planned, but sometimes after dinner, when it was getting close to bedtime, but mom would start looking around to see if she had the right ingredients. it doesn’t take much and since she is a first-class cook and baker, she generally did. lucky kid!

start with any kind of fruit or mix of fruit. honestly – peaches, apples, berries, plums, apricots, blueberries. sometimes i mix them with a little sugar, cinnamon and/or raisins, depending on how i feel. if the fruit is very juicy, you might add a tablespoon or so of flour to soak the juices up. (are you getting that this is a dump-and-guess late night dessert recipe?? and it’s almost impossible to screw up crisp.)

then put the fruit in a baking dish. the joy of crisp is that you can literally make one serving (or two!).

then mix the topping itself. for a full pan of crisp you’ll need: (but half it, quarter it, third it… whatever you need)

1 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 stick butter (cold)
1/2 oats

mix everything together and use a pastry cutter (remember the pastry cutter?) or fork to “cut in” the cold butter until it’s about the size of peas.

put a nice layer of topping over your fruit and bake at 375 degrees until the fruit starts to bubble and the topping browns. (cooking time will totally depend on your fruit, how thick the layer is, how thick the topping is, etc…)

the result: heaven.

if you somehow contain yourself and don’t eat it all while it’s warm, it goes very well for breakfast. or so i’ve been told.

ice cream crunchies

remember those little bits of wonton we held on to? mm hmm!

toss them in a little melted butter (or other shortening of your choice) and then in some cinnamon and sugar and then in the oven

and then on top of ice cream.

that’s what i mean when i say use what you have to your best, cheapest, yummiest advantage! you can do it!