Easy, Festive Pear Crisp Recipe

By Cara Eisenpress 
on December 18th, 2014
In: Recipes

Hi! Cara here from Big Girls, Small Kitchen, with a sweet celebration of the fruit that’s too often overlooked this time of year. The pear, with its caramel tones and sink-your-teeth-in texture, too often fails to appear between celebrations of apples and the embrace of Winter citrus. Not here, and not with me: I love pears unequivocally. And I want them to be on your holiday table.

Pear Crisp

IMG_4478 (1)

Now, there’s a lot of fuss around holiday desserts. There are bûches du noël and meticulously decorated Christmas cookies, neither quick nor easy. And there are times and places for complicated sweets! But for a casual family supper, maybe on Christmas Eve, maybe even on the day after Christmas, a homey and delicious pear crisp fits the bill better than anything else.

What’s more, you don’t have to put down your wine to eat a dessert like this. Pour one more glass of Vintner’s Reserve Pinot Noir before digging into your serving of sweet, simple crisp. I dollop mine with crème fraîche. Vanilla ice cream works too.

Pear Crisp

 

Print
Homemade Pear Crisp
 
Author: 
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: American
 
 
 
Serves: 6 to 8
 
A simple, wintry dessert that features my favorite fall fruit: pears. Look for ripe pears, but even if the fruit are slightly underripe, the dish will still be delicious (you can add an extra tablespoon of sugar to the pears if you're worried that they're tangy.)
Ingredients
  • For the fruit:
  • 2½ pounds ripe Bosc pears (5 pears)
  • 2 tablespoons orange juice (you can squeeze it straight from an orange if you don't want to buy a quart of OJ!)
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 tablespoons flour
  • pinch salt
  • For the crisp topping:
  • ½ cup flour
  • ½ cup rolled oats
  • ½ cup sugar
  • ½ teaspoon cinnamon
  • ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
  • pinch of salt
  • 4 tablespoons softened butter
 
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Peel and core the pears, then chop them into about 1-inch pieces. Place them in a buttered 9-inch pie pan or a similar sized oven safe pan that will look pretty on the table. Add the orange juice, sugar, flour, and salt. Toss to combine.
  2. In a second bowl, combine all the crumb ingredients. Use your fingers to smash the butter into the dry ingredients, pressing everything together to form crumbs--some large, some smaller. Scatter them across the surface of the pears.
  3. Place the dish on a sheet pan, just in case things bubble over. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until the fruit is bubbly and soft and crisp is brown.
 
3.2.1311