Xanté Pears w/mascarpone cream and crumble

If you put together pear and pear liqueur, what do you get? A really freaking tasty couple of pears I say!

Christmas is here soon and that means I have a million ideas for Christmas table already. This dessert is one of them.

I guess port wine poached pears is a pretty classic combination but I wanted to marry my pears with pear liqueur Xanté. It´s probably because I happened to have a bottle of it in my liqueur shelf but also, I really wanted the pears to maintain their fair color.

I colored the mascarpone cream with golden food color to make this dessert a bit more festive but the color I used didn´t work that well (it just made the cream look yellowy). But do try the coloring, it´s a nice little touch for this fine dessert.

We tried this with Jani today and I must say that this totally works for other occasions than Christmas, too.

For 4 persons: 
2 medium/big pears

a knob of butter

a good ol´splash of Xanté (maybe 1 dl ish)

2 dl apple juice

½ ts grated lemon zest

1-3 tbls sugar, depending on how sweet the pears and the apple juice are

1 cinnamon stick

2 cm piece of vanilla pod, halved

Peel the pears and cut them into quarters. Take off seeds if there´s any. Melt the butter in a pan and let it brown a bit. Add the pears and sugar. Flip the pears a few times in the pan before adding Xanté, apple juice, cinnamon stick, lemon zest and halfed vanilla pod. Let the pears poach for about 15-20 minutes. Flip at least once during poaching.

Take the pears out and let the liquid caramelize a while longer. It´s supposed to get syrupy. Add a few drops of lemon juice at the end.

Mascarpone cream: 
1 dl whipping cream

125 g mascarpone

2 ts caster sugar

touch of grated lemon zest

gold food color

Whip the cream and add mascarpone, lemon zest, food color and sugar and mix.

Put the mix into the fridge unless you put the dessert together immediately. You can do this mascarpone cream and the crumble before-hand and then put the dessert together when it´s time for it. So you won´t waste any time if you´re having dinner with others.

Crumble: 
1 dl almond chips (other nuts work just as well) 

40 g wheat flour
40 g caster sugar
30 g butter

Mix all the ingredients with your fingers until the mix resembles wet sand. Don´t over-work the dough otherwise it will start forming gluten and we don´t want this as the crumble is supposed to be.. well, crumbly. Pop in to the oven into 160 °C for 5 minutes or until the mix is golden brown.

  

Tip:

You can replace the crumble with toasted nuts. This will make the dessert gluten free, too

Put the dessert together:

Put the quartered pears to the bottom of a clear glass. Pour some syrup on top. Add the mascarpone cream on top and top it all up with the crumble. Decorate with a whole cinnamon stick.

Happy days!

Rakkaudella,

Paula