… And in part three, Minyi treated us to a dessert of caramelized pear (and impromptu banana addition) with honey florentines and very chocolate ice cream.
You’ll need:
- Two pears
- One medium-sized banana
- 1 tablespoon sugar and 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
For florentines (Courtesy of Martha Stewart Cookies):
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
- 1 1/2 tablespoons honey
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- pinch of coarse salt
1. Preheat oven to 190 C or 375 F. Melt butter, brown sugar, and honey in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Transfer to a bowl. Whisk in flour and salt until smooth.
2. Working quickly so nothing sets prematurely, drop 1/2 teaspoons of batter onto large baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing them at least 3 inches apart. Bake cookies until they spread and turn golden brown, no longer than 6 minutes!
3. Let cool on sheets of wire racks. Carefully remove with your fingers. You can also drape them onto something before they set and then chill them to get the florentines to set in a shape like a basket etc. We draped them on glasses and souffle dishes!
While those are setting, caramelize the fruit so that you can serve it warm.
1. Heat up a small pan and on medium heat dissolve sugar and butter until it begins to caramelize lightly.
2. Wash and cut fruit – the pears lengthwise, the bananas into round slices. It will fit snugly.
3. Arrange fruit, cut side down in the pan and cook for 5-10 minutes, until fruit has caramelized and is tender.
4. Serve in the florentine basket, pouring the caramel sauce over the fruit with chocolate ice cream on the side. If you have a proper freezer it will also not melt so fast.
i love everything very chocolate or very bitter chocolate, but from my experience of having desserts similar to this/in different places and different countries/, it is way too much. pears and bananas–too much already, caramelized and with sauce and with ice-cream. tooooo sweet. bananas are tasty when they are on a slightly green side, even then, dipped in chocolate/wallys!!/ too sweet. pears are good with cranberries or with a sauce, based on lemon or orange liquer + mint leaves, fresh the pictures look very nice and i”d like to taste it, but personally to me it”s more of a SEPARATE sweet dish, then an after dinner dessert. this is my answer to martha.
Well Martha only provided the cookie part of the recipe, the rest was all us!
I know you’d like just the ice cream part, separately haha.
zoya—I agree with you, even for a sweetphile like me, I thought boy that was _a lot_ of sugar (on hindsight of course).
the recipe actually calls for a light and airy chocolate mousse to accompany the honey florentine and caramelised pear/bananas but I didnt take into consideration the amt of time the mousse needs to set so I replaced it with store bought choc ice cream instead – the airy texture of the mousse would otherwise made it a less heavy handed dessert i feel
I have since learn to, as Michael Kors would say, edit edit edit 🙂
that Michael Kors :), he knows what he’s talking about.