Day 171: Pear, almond and chocolate crumble

There were at least four other occasions that I went to make Pear, almond and chocolate crumble and they didn’t work out because of one reason or another. Not that there was anything wrong with the recipe – it was just trying to fit in approximately an hour and 15 minutes as the recipe said it would take that long to prepare and cook. Finally, I got round to making it this week and here’s how it went…

I began with the pears. Now, you have to use a right few – 12, in fact so there was quite a lot of peeling. I then had to core and dice them. I didn’t have a shallow 2-litre oven-proof dish like the one shown in the cook book so I used my delf casserole dish instead. I put the diced pears into the dish and covered them with some caster sugar. I then put the dish into the oven for 10 minutes which left me time to get on with the crumble. In a large bowl, I sifted in plain four and cinnamon before adding ground almonds and rubbing in diced chilled butter. It was then time to add in chopped dark chocolate and soft light brown sugar. I then sprinkled the crumble mixture over the pears and put the dish back in the oven for just over 40 minutes. I served it with some double cream.

The verdict…

Dear Husband loved this recipe and awarded it 9 marks out of 10. He said it was “beautiful” and if only I could bottle the aroma. I told him ‘they’ already do – they’re called cinnamon-fragranced air fresheners (!). Anyway, the recipe was a real hit. Dear Sister No.1 loved the recipe too. Dear Son reckoned it was ‘ick’ but couldn’t stop going back over to eat more. Although I’m not too keen on pears but really liked this recipe and gave it a 7.

Overall, I found this recipe very time consuming to make. The recipe said it would take 15 minutes to prepare but I’m not joking that it took me ages to peel, core and dice all the pears – probably nearer to 35 minutes. Although it took 10 minutes to cook and then a further 40 minutes to cook, the recipe didn’t require a lot of monitoring which meant I was free to clean up the incredible mess I’d just made. Will I make it again? Well, I have to say that with a score of 9, I have to! However, this would be a recipe I’d probably only make for winter Sunday lunches and, even at that, probably around Christmas time. Sorry people, I just had to mention the ‘C’ word :)