Baked Pears Recipe
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 45 minutes
Makes 12 pear halves
- 60g/2ozs plain all purpose flour
- 60g/2ozs brown sugar
- 60g/2ozs butter, cubed
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- Pinch ground cloves
- Pinch salt
- 25g/1oz rolled oats or quick cook oats
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 6 pears (around 140g/5ozs each)
Step 1 - Preheat oven to 180C/350F or 160C/320F fan forced. Place the flour, brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and salt in a food processor and pulse until you get fine crumbs. (Thermomix directions: 10 seconds, speed #6). Mix in the rolled oats and vanilla until you get a slightly damp mixture that can clump.
Step 2 - Cut the pears in half and then shave off the base so that you get a flat bottom. Cut out the core with a melon baller tool. Place them in a large baking dish. Divide the streusel topping among all of the pear halves. Bake for 40-45 minutes. If your pears are very unripe you may need 10 minutes more.
Honestly pears are one of the few things that I really enjoy about Winter. If I could be in summer or spring all year round I'd be very happy. It's always with the change of weather that I get a cold and recently I caught one when the temperature dipped suddenly. Unfortunately it was also around the time for my birthday karaoke with the Elliotts. It was a day that I was looking forward to for weeks.
Despite many cups of Korean honey yuzu tea, orange juice, blankets and manuka honey lozenges and rest it took a while to get rid of the congestion. I even postponed going out with friends in favour of rest just to aid in my recovery. I really wanted to be able to sing at karaoke and even had a karaoke song in my mind and it was a power ballad because this girl loves a dramatic power ballad.
I wish I could tell you that by some miracle I woke up on the Sunday and my throat was clear but it wasn't. I still had congestion in my sinuses and I still sounded pretty bad. Still, I had a great time singing along rather than doing a solo. And hopefully I'll be ok for a power ballad the next time!
So tell me Dear Reader, do you enjoy winter? What songs do you like to sing at karaoke?