Pear crumble

Last Friday I bought a new pie dish especially for making the lemon meringue pie that I've been hankering for in the last three weeks. But due to an extremely busy week-end, I still am planning to make the lemon meringue pie. In fact, I'll probably have to throw away the lemons, they are looking rather sad now.

But on Saturday, my dear neighbour gave me some of the huge pears that both Lundulph and I have been longingly looking at - small tree with huge pears. Lundulph even dared to go and check to see if they are real, or some sort of decoration.

And last night I cleaned them and we were going to have them for dessert. Well, they were a bit tart and dried out our mouths, so we left them and tonight I made pear crumble to inaugurate my fancy new pie dish:


Today was also Mix-A-New-Batch-Müsli-Night, along with Make-Yogurt-Night and also Pizza-Night, so I was way busy and got Lundulph to help me out. He made the crumble while I was making the yogurt and here's what he did:

Ingredients

2.5 dl porridge oats
2 dl plain flour
1 tbsp caster sugar
100 g margarine
4 - 5 large pears
3 tbsp caster sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
margarine for the dish

Method

1. Mix the porrige oats, flour and caster sugar with the margarine into crumbles. If it all comes together into one big lump, just add more flour and oats, until crumbles form.
2. Peel and cut the pears into smallish pieces.
3. Mix the caster sugar with the cinnamon. I put both in a jar, closed the lid and shook it for a bit. Also good to store in, if it's too much.
4. Grease the pie dish and put the pear in it. Sprinkle generously with the sugar and cinnamon mix, stir the pears around so all pieces get a little of the mixture.
5. Level out the pears and cover with the crumbles. Level out again, to make sure it'll bake evenly.
6. Bake in a pre-heated oven at gas mark 6 (220 degrees C) for 30 minutes.

Today we had the crumble with dairy ice cream and the pear flavour really came out. And idea for next time is to add chopped hazelnuts to the crumble.

Now this recipe is slightly different from the apple crumble one from before. The reason for this is that I asked Lundulph to look in my old recipe book and what he found was the recipe I learned at school many years ago. It is also originally meant for apples, but these pears worked ever so nicely. The pie dish is 29 cm (12") diameter.

Oh, and here's a photo of today's pizza, lots of tomato sauce and I remembered the jalapenos: