Pear Cheese Tart
I’m taking a break from food blogging this week to bring you something from my kitchen. Back home in ATL, I had a huge kitchen, a fabulous island, a Kitchen Aid stand mixer and more pans and pots that you could think of. I even had a madeleine pan! But here in my student studio hovel, I managed to stuff in a large mixing bowl, a hand mixer, and two baking pans – one cake, and one bread.
I don’t plan on being deterred from baking though…
On crappy days and end of long weeks, there is nothing like having a slice of your own pear cheese tart to just make you feel loads better. Even if it’s leftover pear tart. Because it’s just that good. The original recipe can be found here. Anything with an asterisk is what I subbed. I also used a store-bought pie crust because I was impatient and didn’t want to do an overnight pie-crust dough. Enjoy:
Ingredients
- 4 pears (I used Asian), cored and thin-sliced*
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1/4 cup lemon juice
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1/2 cup (50 g) dark brown sugar (I subbed out the white sugar because pears are naturally very sweet to begin with and just used one large table spoon for the cornstarch)*
- 3/4 tsp salt (I used black lava Hawaiian salt because it’s all I have here)*
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1 tsp pumpkin spice*
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1 Tbsp cornstarch
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1-2 oz cheese, I used Colbere from the local farmer’s market (optional, use according to your taste)
Directions
1. Heat oven to 425° F.
2. Mix dark brown sugar, salt, spice and cornstarch in a bowl to combine.
4. Fill the crust with layers of pears.
5. Once the pie is filled, dot the top with cheese (if using).
6. Bake for 15 minutes at 425° and then reduce the heat to 375° and bake for another 30-40 minutes. If you’re going to do a top crust, please do a crust shield otherwise your crust will just burn like mine did. This is just placing aluminum foil on top of the crust edge.
I have to say, it tasted GREAT when the girls were over and we had it piping hot from the oven (no cooling here!) but it tastes just as good re-toasted in the toaster oven. I think next time I will try to shoot for a real crust when I am not slammed with work. Goal in life is to do puff pastry from scratch and pie crust from scratch. Hope you enjoy this recipe. The original blogger has quite a good website as well so please stop by to check her out at Local Milk. Thanks so much, have a great weekend!
Cheers,
R/g