City Cottage No 5 | Page 25

Ripe juicy pears go so well with chocolate, a real favourite of mine.

Serves 6-8

Prepare the pastry shell as before baking blind for 15 minutes.

Ingredients

For the filling:

200g butter, softened to room temperature

200g soft brown sugar

3 eggs, beaten together

30g plain flour

25g cocoa powder, sift the flour and cocoa together

150g ground almonds

3 ripe pears

50g butter

50g golden caste sugar

Method

1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

2. Sift a tablespoon of the flour/ cocoa into the mixture and beat in the eggs.

3. Add the rest of the flour/cocoa and the ground almonds and stir well into the creamed mixture. Leave to one side.

4. Peel and quarter the pears.

5.Melt the butter and sugar together in a frying pan over a low heat and add the pears.

6. Cook them gently making sure they are coated in the butter mixture for 8 minutes. 25.Spoon the tart filling into the pastry case and smooth out.

7. Lay the pears in the filling evenly

8. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the filling is springy to the touch.

Chocolate Pear Tart

Image by camposart (originally posted to Flickr as chololate tart) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons