Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Cardamom Spiced Poached Pears with Ice Cream and Cardamom-Pistachio Cookies


I love the idea of poached fruit desserts with ice-cream, especially after dinner when a cake is too filling and a cookie will not simply not cut it. Having said that, I have such an embarrassing memory from the last time I tried something similar, my pears were hard rock and people were trying to cut the thing as I served them with a fork! Shameful! Let's fast forward to today:)

This time I made up the recipe and was much more careful picking up pears, (we are looking for ripe fruit but not too soft). I redeemed myself big time, as Sera and Andre were there when I first made them and they certainly remember those rocks:)

Here is what you need:

1) 6 ripe pears, Borsh works perfect, try to pick the ones with stems.
2) 2 cups of cranberry-apple juice
3) 5 pods of cardamom
4) 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
5) 1/2 teaspoon of ginger
6) 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
7) Juice of one lemon

Here are the steps:

1) Peel pears and make sure to keep the stems for a pretty after shot:)
2) Cover peeled pears with lemon juice, so they don't get brown.
3) Place pears in a large pot with the cranberry-apple juice and all the spices and vanilla.
4) Poach the pears about 30 minutes under medium heat, until they become soft to touch.
5) Take them on a plate to cool.
6) Fire up the heat to high and continue boiling the juices for the syrup. This takes a long time, and I gave up after the first 30 minutes and microwaved the juice for at least 3 minutes.
7) Plate the dessert as you wish, with ice-cream, frozen yogurt and/or cookies. I had the cardamom cookies on hand and they worked perfect with the cardamom spiced pears.

Marc took the pictures, I love how they came out. It looks way too fancy!

Enjoy!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Simply beautiful. The photo is great.

Baking Fairy said...

Thank you!!!

Anonymous said...

And let me say they were delicious in an incredibly original way!

Thank you for the wonderful treat Baking Fairy.