I've been sidetracked from apples this month as I've come across a source for free pears. Four pies and one tart later, I'm about to ready to move on to the six varieties of apple I've been hoarding. So before we get back to our first love, here's the pear round up.1. Pear Tart: I used a basic pear tart recipe from Great Pies & Tarts by Carole Walter. It was quite nice, although I'm not such a huge fan of the apricot jam glaze. Apricot always just tastes strange to me. The crust recipe came from the same book - it turned out well, although it took forever to make; it involved all kinds of hand massaging of butter bits and swirling ingredients gently in a clockwise direction.
2. Two different Pear Sour Cream Pies: on the left, you'll see a pear sour cream pie based on Aunt Ruby Alice's sour cream strawberry pie recipe (see earlier post). On the left is a pie based on the apple sour cream pie recipe in The Joy of Cooking. Ruby Alice's involves mixing dry ingredients into sour cream and applying to the top. The final result is lovely and thick and creamy, and has a sugary crust on top. For the other one, I added some cinnamon and sugar to the pears, and then just dumped sour cream on top. It was nice when warm, but man, I had a leftover piece that came straight out of the fridge, and it was foul. It probably didn't help that I used low fat sour cream. Bleh. Oh, and I'm still having problems under cooking fruit pies, so the pears were a tad crunchy, which didn't help. 3. Pear raspberry
pies: One out of the oven, one still in. I had a bunch of pears left and wanted to use them up, so I tossed them with sugar and frozen raspberries, and covered them with a crumb topping. I didn't chill the dough enough though, so the crust cooked very quickly and I took the first one out sooner than I would have liked. I'm hoping that because the pears are riper than the last bunch, they won't need as much cooking.
pies: One out of the oven, one still in. I had a bunch of pears left and wanted to use them up, so I tossed them with sugar and frozen raspberries, and covered them with a crumb topping. I didn't chill the dough enough though, so the crust cooked very quickly and I took the first one out sooner than I would have liked. I'm hoping that because the pears are riper than the last bunch, they won't need as much cooking. Coming soon: Pies I ate this summer, Various apple pies, The Piebrary goes international, and a surprise mystery pie of such strange and shocking flavor that you won't believe it and which I'll probably only make once.
5 comments:
So glad to see the odyssey is still going strong! I am truly intrigued by the mystery pie.
Also, I really like the pear-raspberry idea, but one of my latest favorites is pear-cranberry. Truly a delightful mix of sweet and tart, and especially good with crisp topping of some sort.
SaraB - pear-cranberry sounds heavenly. Pear-raspberry was nice, but even using just a few raspberries, they totally overwhelmed the pears. Here are my questions: 1. Dried cranberries or fresh? 2. With or without spices?
My Better Homes & Gardens Pies and Cakes cookbook has a pear crumble pie recipe that uses American cheese on top (I would think cheddar), and also a pear pineapple cheese pie with sour cream and, again, American cheese. I'm guessing the pineapple would also overpower the pear, though. You'll like this quote about the pineapple rhubarb pie: "Surprise! Looks like rhubarb, tastes like pineapple!"
ooooh, Better Homes & Gardens, why do you hate me? I would totally eat pie with cheddar cheese on top, but why would you want to ruin a pie with American "cheese"? And while I love pineapple, if something looks like rhubarb, it should taste like rhubarb!!
Post a Comment