Poached Pears

Recently The Great British Bake Off has been on television. During pudding week, Louis made a pear dessert, I can’t remember it exactly, but this gave me the idea to make poached pears for the first time. It was actually easier than expected and tasted like heaven! My family and I ate it up too quickly for me to take a photo, so instead, I’m going to give you the recipe! I found this recipe in ‘Dangerous Desserts’ which is a cook book full of recipes from the Good Food magazine.

Poached Pears with Chocolate sauce.

Serves 4 people.

Ingredients

·         

       4 firm pears, peeled

·         50g/2oz golden caster sugar

·         Juice and pared rind of ½ lemon

·         100g/3 ½ oz plain chocolate, broken into pieces

·         3-4 tbsp double cream

1.     Slice the pears in half, leaving the stalks intact, and scoop out the cores. Pour 450ml/ ¾ pint water into a shallow pan, add the sugar, lemon juice and rind and heat gently until the sugar dissolves.

2.       

      Bring the liquid to the boil, then add the pear halves and cover with a dampened disc of non-stick baking paper. Simmer for 10 minutes, or until the pears are tender when pierced with a knife. Leave to cool in the poaching liquid.

3.      

            Place the chocolate in a small pan with 6 tablespoons of the poaching liquid and melt over a very low heat, (I did this in a glass bowl over a pan of boiling water) stirring continuously, until smooth(you need to keep stirring, even though it may look like it is going wrong). Remove from the heat.

4.       

        Divide the chocolate sauce between 4 dessert plates. Spoon little dots of the cream on each plate and feather with the tip of a skewer. (I didn't do this as my mum doesn't like cream, instead I poured the chocolate sauce over the pears and didn't use the cream). Remove the pears from the poaching liquid, pat dry with kitchen paper and arrange on top of the chocolate sauce, serve at once.

Overall I loved this recipe, but my mum didn't like the sauce as it was slightly too bitter. However I prefer dark chocolate so I liked it. If you have a sweet tooth, you could try substituting the plain chocolate for milk chocolate and see how it turns out.

Later on this week me and my mum are going up to Glasgow to see the Good Food show. There will be lots of stalls selling cooking tools and food. Also we have booked into the theater there to see Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry doing a master class, so keep your eyes peeled, as I will be putting up a post about it and there will hopefully be some pictures.