The pears at the grocery store are looking so good for the last two weeks; I decided to do a pear cookie. The pear I choose was the Bartlett Pear. Here are some fun facts about pears. Pears have a subtly sweet taste that I love. I buy all different kinds of pears, but the Bartletts looked ripe and had the yellow skin I love.
Caramel goes very well with pears. But I didn't want to add too much caramel, or it would overpower the pear taste, so I opted for the caramel chips. And I did not add any salt into the cookie dough since the caramel chips have sea salt in them.
My cookie needed a little crunch but not a strong nut taste, so I decided on the blanched almonds. It would give just enough hint of the almond taste to compliment the caramel and pears. All in all, this is a pretty tasty cookie.
Caramel Pear with Almond Cookies
Barbara HallIngredients
- 1 cup Butter unsalted 2 sticks room temperature
- ½ cup Light brown sugar 106 g
- ½ cup Sugar white 99 g
- ½ teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- ½ teaspoon Lemon juice
- ½ teaspoon packed Lemon zest
- 2 ¾ cups All-purpose flour 330 g
- 1 teaspoon Baking powder
- 1 Pear diced small
- ½ teaspoon Lemon juice for diced pears
- ½ cup Caramel Chips with Sea Salt
- ½ cup Almonds blanched
Instructions
- Juice and zest one lemon into separate bowls and set aside. You should get at least one teaspoon of lemon juice. Use ½ teaspoon over the diced pears and ½ teaspoon for the cookie dough.
- Dice 1 Barlett pear into small pieces and then sprinkle ½ teaspoon of lemon juice over the pears. Lemon juice will stop the browning process. Weigh or measure the white and light brown sugars into a bowl and set aside. Weigh or measure the flour and baking powder into a bowl and run a whisk through to blend.
- In a stand or hand-held mixer, add the butter and the sugars and blend on medium speed for 2 to 3 minutes. Next, add the vanilla extract, lemon juice, and lemon zest till incorporated. Turn the mixer down to a low setting and add the flour mixture for about a minute. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides and across the bottom and finish blending. Don't over mix; just incorporate the flour.
- Add the caramel chips, almonds, and dices pears and just mix for a minute till everything is blended. Don't mix for any more than a minute, so the pears do not crumble. You can always hand mix with a spatula if you think it needs to be incorporated more throughout the cookie dough. Loosely wrap and refrigerate for ½ hour.
- Preheat oven to 350° and line 2 cookie pans with parchment paper and set aside. Pull dough from the refrigerator and using a medium cookie scoop place 12 scoops on a lined cookie pan. I take three fingers and flatten the top of the cookie scoop. Bake for 13-15 minutes, moving to a cooling rack after being taken from the oven. This recipe makes about 2-½ dozen cookies.
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