Bughouse posting from the grave about desserts again. This time: dessert making for the baking-impaired!
Poached pears. Super easy, no baking knowledge required, quite tasty. I made a pear tart last night and had leftover pears, so I poached em. Deeeeee-licious.
They won't look special, but they can pack a punch.
You're going to want a firmer pear that holds together. Bosc pears work well for this if you're an American. Sorry, can't speak to pear varieties common in other parts of the world. The rest of this is in US units anyway, so suck it/sorry.
Get a large pan, big enough to just barely hold all the pears you're going to use. I typically find 4 pears and a 10 inch or so pan works well.
The basics:
Fill the pan about halfway up the side with water. For a 10 inch or so pan, this is a quart of water. (there are also recipes for poaching in wine but I'm not gonna talk about that)
Bring water to a boil at medium heat.
While water heats up, peel and quarter the pears. Trust me peeling is worth the effort (and it's the only particularly annoying step). Be careful to remove the few seeds too. This is easily done once you've quartered the pear and the seeds are exposed.
Dissolve 1 1/3 cups of sugar in the water (you can go more if you prefer sweeter desserts, but this is a good amount imo)
Add the pears to the water.
Try to keep the pears fully submerged (by adding more water if necessary). Pears do sink, but if you're having trouble keeping them under water, there is a solution*
Cook for about 25 minutes, if Bosc pears. Less if using a softer pear.
The pears are done done when a knife goes through with zero resistance, but if you stop a touch early there's no big deal
Keep both the pears and most of the cooking liquid.
For extra effort, you can take out the pears when they're done and further reduce the cooking liquid by about half until it's a more concentrated syrup (and then save all of that of course mmm).
They keep very well and can be reheated easily, or just immediately serve hot. It pairs -haha- amazingly with vanilla ice cream.
The fun part:
Don't use just a boring old sugar solution for cooking. Spice it up!
Good additions include: lemon juice, lemon rind/zest, cinnamon (warning: do not go overboard), cloves, ginger, vanilla, and star anise
For extra extra bonus points, once you're done cooking the pears, you could remove them and add dried fruit to the hot liquid; they will plump up and infuse with the flavors of the spices. Apricots and prunes are the classics here but any dried fruit will do.
*solution: take a piece of parchment paper and fold it into a triangle. Cut at the length of the radius of the pan and also a bit at the point of the triangle, so that when you unfold you get a circle that covers the pan and a whole in the middle for steam to escape.