spiced pear cardamom butter

[wsmoak]

Organic Gardening magazine published a recipe for spiced pear cardamom butter recently, and the Mystery Pears were falling off the tree, so... we made it today: http://www.organicgardening.com/cook/spiced-pear-cardamom-butter

It came out more the consistency of applesauce than any kind of butter, but the house smelled wonderful and it tastes great -- we will be adding it to oatmeal this winter!

As far as the recipe, over 6 lbs of my pears only made 5 half pints. I think it's because we didn't thin the pears and got lots of small ones, so proportionally more of the weight was in unused cores.

And it took way, way longer than 10 minutes for them to start breaking down, and way longer than an hour for them to be finished. There was no helping them along with a potato masher either, the only way we got done was with the immersion blender.

Maybe, as someone commented in the plant identification thread, they really weren't ripe yet, despite being reasonably juicy and sitting in a paper bag for over a week. Oh, well. If I hadn't taken them, the squirrels would have.

Fair warning, if you are buying the ingredients for this, be prepared for a small bottle of cardamom to cost $7-10! I had never had occasion to use it before, and apparently it's right up there with vanilla bean and saffron.

-Wendy

 

[digitS']

Wendy, I know very little about this sort of thing but in what seems like another life, when I confined my garden to my yard & ground that was across the alley, I made apple butter and pear butter each year. Inspired by the mango and blueberry pancakes I put together for Sunday breakfast I will dare to share the recipe for pear butter.

(Yes, we buy fruit during the summer - the mango trees don't do all that well here .)

Anyway the pear butter was for 3 cups of Bartlett pear pulp -- 1 cups sugar, teaspoon cinnamon, 1/8 t allspice, 1/8 t dry ginger. I remember the little containers of frozen pear butter fondly.

Steve

 

[Lorelai]

This sounds absolutely fantastic! It's on my "Canning for Christmas" list now (I have more time than money). Best thing is I already have cardamom in my cupboard, since I use it for my Jule Kaga (Scandinavian Christmas Bread) every year. Yum!