If you want to bake something that is easy, tastes fabulous AND makes your house smell incredible then I have the recipe for you. This is my mother's pear custard recipe. I'm not sure where she got the recipe because she was an insatiable cookbook collector as well as fabulous cook.
I made this for our Christmas Eve dinner as a special treat for Rick. He especially loves pear custard.
I find pears are a bit like avocados in that you can only find rock hard ones at the grocery store and there is about a 20 minute window when they are perfectly ripe and then they quickly turn into a sad, liquidy mush. I lucked out and found some that just needed another day before they were perfect.
This is an especially easy recipe. The most time consuming part is peeling and cutting the pears. All the remaining ingredients get thrown in a blender and then poured on top.
I've never found that a particular pears works better than another. I tend to use Bosc but this time I used Bartlett. The only real difference is the Bosc pears look prettier because they are longer and you can see the pattern better.
On to the recipe!
Pear Custard
- Six ripe pears, peeled and quartered
- 1/4 cup butter, melted
- 1/3 cup flour
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 3/4 cup Half & Half
- 3 eggs
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 tsp vanilla
Preheat oven to 350º. Spray a 9-inch round baking dish with cooking spray (or rub it with butter) and arrange pear quarters in a pleasing pattern. Mix the remaining ingredients in a blender until smooth and then pour over pears. Bake for 40-45 minutes. Dust with powdered sugar and serve.
