Name: Pear & Almond Dumplings
Yield: Makes 8 pastries
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 200 g caster sugar; Ice water; Egg wash: 1 egg whisked with a Pinch of salt; 4 firm-ripe Williams pears, about 900 g; 600 g Puff Pastry or Quick Puff Pastry; 2 tablespoons lemon juice, strained before measuring; 30 g unsalted butter, softened; icing sugar for finishing; 7.5 cm piece of cinnamon stick; 1 vanilla pod, left whole; 2 medium egg yolks; 2 tablespoons unbleached plain flour; 75 g almond paste (see Note); 2 tablespoons caster sugar

Preparation info

Makes
8
pastries

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Pastry Perfection

By Nick Malgieri

Published 2014

About

Most fruit dumplings are constructed by wrapping a piece of fruit in a square of dough. This one is a little different - the fruit and a dab of almond filling are sandwiched between two layers of puff pastry, and the dough never shrinks, falls away or does anything but rise to flaky perfection around the fruit.

Ingredients

600 g Puff Pastry or Quick Puff Pastry

Method

For the poached pears, half-fill a 4-5-litre casserole with a cover with ice water and the lemon juice. Peel, halve and core the pears, dropping them in one piece at a time. Skim out the ice, add the sugar, vanilla pod and cinnamon and bring to the boil over a medium heat. B