Recipe Review: Pear Torte

Tonight my good friend and I tested out a dessert recipe from Smitten Kitchen. The recipe is similar in technique to an apple torte my mom makes, and overall this recipe gets five stars: It is both easy to make and delicious.

WARNING: Do NOT keep reading if you are hungry.

The semisweet chocolate is melty and rich, the pears are almost molten, and crust is golden with a flavor of caramel. It takes 20-30 minutes of active preparation and the full 40-50 minutes to bake, just long enough to cook and eat a simple dinner.

This recipe will most likely reappear on our holiday table, reincarnated: Having followed the recipe fairly faithfully this round, I plan to make a couple changes and report back. I found this dessert to defy one of the basic laws of desserts: It had too much chocolate. We used 130 grams of chocolate(the measurement of 3/4 C is imprecise because it relies on the size of the chips/chunks), and I plan to reduce that to about 100 g so that the pear and chocolate will be better balanced. I am also planning to try white chocolate instead of the semisweet as well as adding vanilla and possibly honey to lighten the dish and pair with the pear. And for the merriment inclined, I could definitely see getting some rum involved.

I have one more fiendish idea, and if it works out, you'll get to read about it here. Stay tuned.

(I apologize for the unartistical frontal shot of the torte, but we couldn't wait to eat, and after we ate, we were too contented to care. Yes, it was that kind of delicious.)

A Trifling Leftover Inspiration?

A traditional trifle is made with ladyfingers or sponge cake, pudding, and whipped cream, but a recent muffin surplus gave me an idea for an efficient alternative. Rather than allowing the extra muffins to go stale, I sliced them in half (to make two discs) and used them as the bottom layer of a trifle. In this case, the muffins were a rich coffee cake, so I used vanilla pudding and whipped cream. But after Thanksgiving, I am tempted to try this with pumpkin muffins and cheescake pudding. I can imagine this could come in handy when office meeting leftovers make their home. What combination would you try?