pear and cranberry pie, and a walk on a cold winter day’s

Combining naturally sweet pears to tart cranberries means I don’t  need tons of added sugar to make this pie an enjoyable dessert, dear neighbors 😊! I pre-cook the berries the day before in a little coconut milk and also make the pie dough. As my latest recipe yields more than necessary, I cut out the extra dough into small stars for a prettier and more festive presentation.

Ingredients ( for a 9” / 22cm Ø pie)

– your favorite pie dough (mine is gluten-free, recipe here)

– 200g fresh or frozen cranberries

– 50g pure cane sugar*

– 4 TBSP coconut milk, organic, with as few additives as possible

– 4 or 5 pears

*PLEASE NOTE that depending on who the pie is for, I up the sugar amount to 60g or lower it to 40g

How to:

1. (This step should be done ahead.) Mix cranberries, sugar and coconut milk in a saucepan, cover and and cook on low, stirring occasionally, until the berries have popped. Remove the lid and cook a little longer to reduce the liquid. Set aside. The cooked fruit will set as it cools down.

The cranberries, coconut milk and sugar are just starting to boil.

After reducing the juices.

2. Roll out the pie dough (tip here), place in pie dish and keep in the refrigerator while you cut out stars from any leftover dough. Pre-bake the pie crust (not the stars) at 205°C / 400°F, non fan, for 10 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, peel, core, and dice the pears. Combine with cooked cranberry sauce.

Dicing the pears: slice each half horizontally before cutting into dice.  In the background, the cranberry “jam” has set overnight.

4. Pour into pre-baked crust and arrange stars on top. Brush the stars with a little beaten egg mixed with some brewed coffee / honey diluted with water for the stars (the honey idea comes from a dear neighbor’s blog here). Return to the oven and bake an additional 40 minutes.

Just to let you know, while the pie was baking I had to brush the stars a second time as they were not getting golden enough.

Enjoy!

Thanksgiving is barely over and over here in New England we are already getting snow! Only just last week, my husband and I were helping our son shovel the driveway before he left for work. I had forgotten what it felt like doing physical work in the cold first thing in the morning!

In spite of the freezing temperatures we have motivated ourselves to go for a walk along Narragansett Bay. I hope that by sharing the photos I took I can also share with all of my dear neighbors some of the joy I felt just looking at the ocean and enjoying the sights of nature last weekend.

No idea what the blue dot on the right is about… I obviously still don’t master all the features of the camera on my new phone (yes, Santa came early this year!)

Three tourists ducks watching the waves.

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Take good care everyone!

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