Sweet Wine and Honey Roasted Pears

  

  The basic recipe came from Fine Cooking, one of my favorite magazines. I did change the sweet wine to Cream Sherry as I had some to use up. Oh, My, Gosh, these were good! Pears baked in honey and cream sherry, just the thing for a lazy Sunday afternoon. You could go fancy and top this with Whipped Cream, Ice Cream or Mascarpone, but we had them with some half and half poured over. I really don’t think you could beat that unless you used heavy cream to pour on.

 These are easy to fix;  peel, halve, core and put in pan in oven. The only fault we could find was that we had to smell them baking and wait longer that we wanted to. 

 Use a sweet dessert wine if using wine, though I don’t know if you could beat the sherry for taste. Also you need ripe but still firm pears. Now days they are easy to buy fresh and this is a great way to use them.

Sweet Wine and Honey Roasted Pears

4 firm-ripe pears (any variety)

1 tablespoon butter, softened (for the pan, so you could use cold butter if you have to)

2 tablespoons, plus 2 teaspoons honey (1 teaspoon per pear half)

½ cup sweet dessert wine or cream sherry

 Heat oven to 375°. Peel, half and core pears. Smear the butter on the bottom of a 9 by 13 inch pan. Set the pear halves in pan cut side down. Drizzle one teaspoon of honey over each pear half. Pour wine or sherry around pears.

 Place in oven and roast for 40 minutes. Remove and baste pears with the liquid in the bottom of pan. Return to oven and bake about 15 to 20 minutes longer until liquid has turned syrupy. Lift pear carefully, the bottom should be brown and caramelized. Turn off oven and leave a little longer if desired. (We ate them right away).

 If there is no juice left to glaze you could add one to 2 tablespoons of hot water to pan and swirl to get a syrup glaze.

 Serve warm with the glaze poured over the pears and with the topping of your choice. 

We really thought the half and half was just right.