italian baked pears with custard and yogurt ice cream recipe

INGREDIENTS

• 50g unblanched whole almonds
• 8 amaretti biscuits, about 100g
• 40g light soft brown sugar
• Few drops of vanilla extract
• 1 egg white
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 4 large, ripe and juicy pears
• 150ml pear or apple juice

For the custard and yogurt ice cream

• 200g wholemilk or Greek natural yogurt
• 500g low-fat fresh vanilla custard
• 2 tbsp clear honey

METHOD

How to make italian baked pears

1. Make the custard and yogurt ice cream. Mix the yogurt, custard and honey together in a bowl. Churn in an ice cream maker or pour into a plastic container and freeze until firm. Scrape into a food processor and blend until smooth, then return to the container and freeze once more. Repeat this process 3 more times, then leave to freeze until hard.

2. Preheat the oven to 190°C/fan170°C/gas 5. Sprinkle the almonds onto a baking tray and roast for 7 minutes - they shouldn't brown. Remove from the oven and leave to cool, then roughly chop.

3. Put the amaretti biscuits into a plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin into tiny chunks, but not a fine powder. Tip into a bowl and mix in the almonds, sugar, vanilla extract, egg white and lemon juice.

4. Peel and halve the pears lengthways. Remove the cores from the pears with a teaspoon to leave a cavity for the filling but leave the stems in place. Put into a shallow ovenproof dish and fill the cavities generously with the amaretti mixture. Pour the pear juice into the dish, cover with foil and bake for 35 minutes, until the pears are tender. Uncover and bake for a further 5 minutes. Serve warm with the custard and yogurt ice cream.

Categories: Italian Recipes