Series 5, Episode 5, Mini Pear Pies

I’m pretty sure this was the first bake that I saw which started brewing the idea of making all of the bake off bakes. It looked like fun to do. Here’s the recipe  https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/mini_pear_pies_77186

I went rogue when making this and poached the pears before making the pastry. This meant that they had completely cooled by the time I was ready to wrap them in pastry. They were big conference pears and didn’t quite fit in my biggest saucepan:

They smelt really good and it was really easy to do.

I’ve made rough puff pastry before so didn’t have any problems following the instructions for that. Wrapping the pears was a little fiddly though. the strands of pastry kept getting all twisted as I was wrapping them round. I thought they looked ok though and I managed to make some pretty leaves:

It was hard to get them to stay standing in the baking tray, even with flat bottoms. I baked them for around 35 minutes until they looked like this:

Some of the sugar and syrup had burnt onto the bottom of the tray and the pastry completely fell off one of them. They look a little pale here but they were crispy and cooked. The pears were initially quite juicy, I think they may have worked better with less ripe pears. We had them hot with ice cream:

The pastry was flaky and the pear was really juicy and sweet, I could eat one of those again right now. I definitely recommend giving these a go for a delicious dessert. I might give them a go making them with shop bought pastry though because it’s easier and I’m sure even Paul Hollywood doesn’t have time to always make his own pastry.

Lily

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