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Pear

Honey Cake with Caramelized Pears

To make a dairy-free version of this recipe, substitute margarine for the butter and soy milk for the regular milk. The cake can be made (without the pears) 1 day ahead, and stored in plastic wrap at room temperature.

Poached Pears with Ginger

These pears may be refrigerated in their cooking liquid overnight.

Baked Pears with Vanilla Mascarpone

Bosc pears must be very ripe; Anjou, which are juicier, can be slightly firm. Avoid enamel baking dishes, as they cause the syrup to burn.

Roquefort Butter and Red Pear Tea Sandwiches

The red skins of the pears are a colorful accent to these simple tea sandwiches. Use the Roquefort butter in other combinations, such as with watercress or thinly sliced tomato.

Herbed Cheese with Pears, Pine Nuts, and Honey

Cheese drizzled with honey is a traditional Mediterranean appetizer; when mixed with fruit and nuts, it makes a tantalizing dessert.

Overnight “Apple Pie” Oatmeal

Assemble the ingredients for this oatmeal in the slow cooker before you go to sleep, and a heart-healthy breakfast reminiscent of apple pie will await you in the morning. Unless you have a large family, you’ll even have enough left over for another breakfast later in the week.

Spiced Fruit

You will need to make this colorful dessert at least 8 hours in advance. If you want to stretch it to serve 12, spoon a half-cup of fat-free vanilla frozen yogurt into each bowl and top each serving with a half-cup of Spiced Fruit.

Roasted Pear-Apple Crostata

For those who love to make simple seasonal fruit desserts, making a rustic tart is one of the most enjoyable ways of creating a beautiful dessert. A proper dough is important, but the overall shape created for the actual tart is up to you. In this recipe for an Italian tart, the pears and apples are first roasted until lightly caramelized, which increases their flavor.

Grilled Dessert Pizza with Pears, Figs, and Honey Mascarpone

Pizza makes a fun dessert, and this one can be served for breakfast as well. It’s topped with seasonal fruit and a dollop of honey-flavored mascarpone cheese, but you can serve it with vanilla bean ice cream instead, if you prefer. Try other grilled fruits such as peaches or nectarines on this pizza.

Cranberry Fruit Salad

Min’s Cranberry Fruit Salad is the result of her crusade to bring vibrant colors and crisp textures to those brown winter meals—including plenty of the cheater pulled and chopped meats. Bright cranberries and fall fruits make a drop-dead gorgeous salad with body, color, and crunch. Smoked turkey, chicken, pork loin, and brisket are always better with a bright accessory. Freeze extra cranberries in the fall to whip this up throughout the winter.

Hazelnut–Brown Butter Cake with Sautéed Pears

This cake was a collaboration of sorts between my husband and my pastry chef Roxana Jullapat (don’t ask!). I love this cake so much that, when it came time to think about my wedding cake, I wasn’t concerned with the flowers on top or the color of the icing; all I knew was that I wanted to serve this incredible hazelnut–brown butter cake. A simple recipe of ground hazelnuts, egg whites, and sugar combined with brown butter results in a moist, rich cake with a delicate, slightly chewy crust. Little did I know, it would take 25 pounds of hazelnuts, 25 pounds of brown butter, and 150 eggs to make a cake big enough to feed our 140 friends and family.

Barbara’s Apples and Asian Pears with Radicchio, Mint, and Buttermilk Dressing

When I was growing up, apples seemed so bland and boring—I could never get excited about a mushy Red Delicious the way I could a summer peach. But today, thanks to small farmers around the country like Barbara and Bill Spencer of Windrose Farms, we have a lot more choices where apples are concerned, and a lot more to get excited about. Determined to revive the disappearing heirlooms, the Spencers painstakingly planted more than forty varieties of apple trees on their farm in Paso Robles, California. It took 6 years for the trees to produce, and that glorious fall, when Barbara turned up at the back door of Lucques with boxes and boxes of their impressive crop, I was blown away. The apples looked dazzlingly beautiful and tasted even better. From russeted emerald greens to mottled pinks to deep burgundy-blacks, we sampled our way through them all, picking our favorites and taking note of which were better raw and which were better cooked. Some of our favorites for eating out of hand were Braeburn, Arkansas Black, and Gernes Red Acre. Crisp, sweet, and tart, these revelatory fruits were the inspiration for this fall salad. And if it’s not enough that they’re growing all these beautiful heirloom apples, Barbara and Bill also grow some of the best Asian pears I’ve ever tasted. Juicy and delicately perfumed, they’re a fun surprise, sliced and tossed with the apples, buttermilk, mint, and radicchio in this thirst-quenching salad.