poached pear and almond tart

Sometimes the weather is horrible, and it rains for days.

And then your flatmates decide to make a feast and you offer to make dessert and then get distracted by other things (like redesigning your buggy site, if you're reading this in a reader, jump out and get over here, it's all new!) and forget to buy ingredients.

And you find a bunch of pears and some almonds and some frozen pastry and decide to make something with that.

You definitely spill some sugar water, drop a pear and get in the way of small hands making delicate thai food.

The thing is with this pie, it tastes good, it just doesn't look so good. But not everything has to look perfect. That's a top life truth right there. Spend more time enjoying baking, spend less time fussing with pastry edges.

Slices of poached pear on sweet almond filling, crumbly pastry. 

Hasty photos taken quickly so I could attack the thai feast.

To make enough for a 5-6 people you'll need:

a packet of ready made shortcrust pastry/your own recipe

4-5 pears, peeled 

1 1/2 cups sugar

4 cups water

the juice of half a lemon

for the filling

1 1/4 cup ground almonds

1 tbsp plain flour

7 tbsp sugar

6 tbsp vegan butter substitute (melted, stick it in the microwave for a few seconds)

a splash of soya milk (possibly)

Peel the pears and cut the top and bottom so they stand flat on a surface. Put the water and sugar into a pan and heat on a medium heat until the sugar dissolves, then add the pears. Stir them gently every few minutes and leave to poach for around 20 minutes.

Remove from the pan and put aside to cool.

Roll our your pastry and line your tart dish. Wrap in a tea towel and freeze for at least an hour, this helps the pastry not to shrink. Once it's frozen, rub some margarine on some foil, then cover the pastry with the margarine side face down and bake in a pre-heated oven (375F/190C) for around ten minutes. Remove the foil, press down any bumpy bits and put back in until it's a golden colour. Remove and leave to cool.

Mix together the filling ingredients, only adding the soy milk if your mix is too thick to stir. Gently press evenly into your pastry shell. 

Cut your pears in half and core them, the cores should just pop right out pretty easily. Cut them on a slant and arrange layered over each other on top of the almond filling.

Bake in the oven at around 350F/170C for about 35-45 minutes. It's cooked when the filling has browned and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Leave to cool and serve with some ice cream or custard.