Simple Cooking: Warm and Gooey Pear Crisp
By Minna A in Food on Dec 16, 2011 8:00PM
Doesn’t it seem like pears are everywhere? Popping up as popular party favors and decorations and hanging from holiday wreaths? Or maybe it’s because the only lyric stuck in our heads is “and a partridge in a pear tree” playing over and over again.
It may be because December is National Pear Month, and you’ll see these sweet and tart fruits adorning grocery store aisles. Pear experts (we didn’t know there were pear experts either) will tell you to check the neck of the pear for ripeness—a slight softness in the skinny neck of a pear will indicate it’s ripe and ready to eat.
Our love of sweet and simple desserts, and particularly the crisp, brings you today’s dessert recipe.
Pear Crisp
Adapted from The Pioneer Woman
Pear Filling
4 pears; peeled, cored and diced
2/3 cups of sugar
¼ tsp of salt
Crisp Topping
1 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour
1/3 cup of sugar
1/3 cup of brown sugar
½ tsp of cinnamon (we added a whole teaspoon)
½ cup of walnuts, chopped
1 stick of butter, melted
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
While the oven is warming, peel your pears. Core the pears with a spoon, removing the seeds, then dice into large ½ inch cubes. Mix in 2/3 cups of sugar and ¼ teaspoon of salt, and set aside.
In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients of flour, sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon and walnuts. Stir together using a fork, and continue stirring as you slowly pour in the melted butter.
Pour the filling into a baking dish, evenly spreading across the bottom. Crumble the crisp toping mixture evenly across. Bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes of baking, move the top rack of the oven to the top tier, and bake at the highest rung for an additional 10 - 12 minutes. This step will produce the toasted top. Remove from the oven, and enjoy it while it’s hot! (For added deliciousness, add a dollop of vanilla ice cream.)