Pear and Almond Crumble. A lovely dessert with a nice refreshing taste, easy to make and great with ice cream or vanilla custard.

Pear and Almond Crumble. This is so delicious! Having made apple crumble from as young as 12 years old, I decided to make some changes and play around with some flavors to make something new and delicious.

The humble apple crumble still features in my kitchen every so often, but I have to say, this Pear and Almond Crumble takes the traditional recipe to another taste level.

The addition of the ground almonds to the pear and almond crumble makes it crunchier and tastier, the pears adds a refreshing change to apple, and the addition of the spices seem to enhance the flavours of the pear and almond.

I have to say, the combination of flavors, textures, and indeed the smells coming from the oven are truly delicious and a wonderful cooking and eating experience!

Served with warm custard or vanilla ice cream, this is by far one of my favorite and most pleasing desserts.

In this recipe, I have made it easier regarding preparation time, by using mixed spice/pumpkin pie spice.

However, if you wanted to use a cinnamon stick, cloves and star anise and infuse the pears in hot water with the spices for a few hours, you could. I did this method at Christmas time, and it does give a gentle 'spice' flavor to every bite.

Really quite sublime. So let's see how we make this delicious Pear and Almond Crumble.

Prep Time

10 minutes

Cook Time

45 minutes

Yield

4 servings

You will need

1 oven dish. Mine measures 12 x 8 and 3 inches deep.

Ingredients

For the Crumble topping

1 cup or 125 g Flour
⅔ cup or 75 g Ground Almonds
3 and ½ oz or 100 g chilled butter (just under 1 stick) cut into small cubes about 1-2cm pieces
1 Teaspoon Mixed Spice / Pumpkin Pie Spice
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
⅓ cup or 60 g regular sugar

For the Filling

1 kg or 2 lbs pears (about 5 pears) Choose hard pears, like Conference / Comice pears, peeled and sliced
A squirt of lemon juice (to stop the pears discoloring)
1 Tablespoon regular sugar
1 Teaspoon Mixed spice / Pumpkin Pie Spice
1 Teaspoon Almond Essence

Instructions

1. Switch the oven on to 180C, 350F, Gas 4. 

Make the crumble topping. 

In a mixing bowl, add all the crumble topping ingredients,

and using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.

You can use a food processor for the rubbing in, but it's more washing up! It should only take you 3 minutes or so by hand.

Make the filling.

2. In a bowl, add the peeled and sliced pears together with the other filling ingredients and combine so the pears are coated with the spices etc.

Then add to the baking dish.

Cover the pears completely with the crumble topping, but do not smooth the topping flat. Lumps and bumps will add to the crunchy texture.

3. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes.

Serve warm with some delicious custard or ice cream. To make our lovely Homemade Custard Click HERE

You can make this recipe in individual ramekins, reduce cooking time to 25 minutes or until topping is golden brown. It will make about 4 - 6 ramekins

We'd love to hear from you and what you thought of our post. Did you make any changes or add some other goodies? Let us know in the comments below. Thanks for reading and happy cooking!

Flavour Ideas:
You can swap the pears for apples, peaches, pineapples, any fruit which isn't too soft.
Also try adding raisins with apples and a sprinkle of cinnamon

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