When I saw these on Jenius.com.au I knew I wanted to make them! I happened to have some delicious pears on hand, bought some pastry and I was all ready!

The recipe is from Jenius and hers was adapted from BBC Good Food.

I didn't have any 5 spice or almonds or cooking chocolate.....

Serves: Makes two pear dumplings (to be halved to serve four)
Preparation time: 10-20mins depending on how skilled you are with shaping pastry
Cooking time: 30mins
Cost: $1.92 (dependent on whether it's pear season or not)

Ingredients

• 2 sheets of store-bought shortcrust pastry
• 2 ripe pears
• 50g Lindt 70% cocoa chocolate with almonds
• milk to glaze

Method

1. Pre-heat oven to 200°C.
2. Melt the chocolate
3. Pull the stalk out of each pear and keep them aside.
4. Core the pears using an apple corer or sharp knife - make sure you scoop out all the seeds.
5. Cut both sheets of pastry into a circle about 20cm in diameter. Reserve some to make the pastry leaves.
6. Fill the pears with the chocolate mixture.
7. Brush the edges of the pastry with water and fold the pastry up around the pear, keeping the shape of the pear. Press to seal and trim off any excess. Brush with milk (or egg whites) and sprinkle with caster sugar.
8. Make some pastry leaves to stick them to the tops of the pears. Stick a reserved stalk back in each and bake on a baking sheet for 30 minutes until the pastry is golden.

Per pear: Energy:2482kJ/592.8kcal, Protein: 9.35g, Fat: 25.3g, Saturated fat: 13.5g, carbohydrate: 70.7g, Sodium: 315g, Fibre: 6g
 






I dusted some cocoa powder on some blueberries with a bit of yoghurt and left over almonds from the chocolate. It looks so pretty and yummy doesn't it!

I made 2, one for my sister and one for me and it looked so pretty we were super eager to eat it. And then it was taste test time and....

We HATED it!!!!!!!!

I had never eaten baked pears before so maybe I just don't like the taste of it.... I will probably never make this ever again! I was able to consume half of it before I gave up and threw it away but my sister took a few bites and threw away the rest.

Here are the problems I identified with this dish:

• For extra fibre, I did not peel the pear so the pear wasn't easily sliced and it didn't stick well with the pastry. I could lift the pastry right off!
• When I was melting the chocolate I added a bit of milk to make it more liquid... when it was baked the watery part separated from the chocolate! 
• The pastry was a lot harder to shape around the pear than I imagined! I had to do a lot of patching up with spare pastry bits! 
• Well some cooking experiments can just fail, even really simple looking ones

Nutritionally speaking
Despite the star of the dessert being a fruit, this dessert is actually hiding a lot of energy/calories. Most of the calories come from the pastry which is also the biggest source of saturated and total fat in this dish. In fact it is the pastry that is hiding away all the good stuff inside it!

The only plus side is the dish is quite low in sodium.

I would personally not have this dessert again because my own one came out tasting horrible! But for those that do like cooking with pears, stick to ones that are poached and treat the pastry type dishes as a sometimes dish. The amount of energy/calories in this dish is equivalent to a meal on its own, no matter how much you try to healthify it with more berries or yoghurt! 

Remember pears are still great fruits to have that are especially high in fibre so have them as is with the skin intact!