Pear, Walnut & Dark Chocolate Crumble
A new recipe for you courtesy of work I did with Walnuts Australia towards the end of last year – incidentally perfect for Melbourne’s current ‘polar blast’ iciness and the dark evenings. It’s one of my favourite winter crumbles: thinly sliced pears in brown sugar, vanilla and lemon with a buttery, oat-y walnut studded topping, dark chocolate melted and oozing through the crevices. Previous iterations had involved cooking down the pears in a buttery caramel – which whilst delicious and still a recommended alternative, churns up significant time and dishes when you’re probably at the point of just wanting to get dessert in the oven.
The walnuts themselves were outstanding: I’d never quite appreciated how good freshly cracked buttery walnuts could be compared to the almost-turning-rancid ones left at the back of the pantry. You can find the rest of the walnut recipes over on their website: a walnut raspberry frangipane slice; my favourite walnut cinnamon scrolls with cream cheese frosting; walnut and maple granola; cheese platter worthy spiced tahini walnuts with comte; and the gooey centred brown butter & dark chocolate walnut cookies.
- 4-5 large pears
- juice of 1/2 lemon
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon corn flour
- 2 teaspoons vanilla essence / paste
- 90 g flour
- 40 g rolled oats 1/3 cup
- 1/4 cup caster sugar 50g
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 100 g unsalted butter cubed
- 70 g dark chocolate
- 100 g walnuts roughly chopped (3/4 cup)
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Preheat the oven to 180°C.
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Peel and thinly slice the pears. Combine with the lemon juice, brown sugar, cornflour and vanilla paste to coat. Transfer to a baking dish approx 5 cup capacity (mine was 22 x 17cm across the base).
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To make the crumble topping, combine the flour, oats, sugar and salt in a bowl .
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Add the cold butter and rub between your fingers/palms into the dry ingredients until only pea size chunks remain. Chop the walnuts roughly and and add to this mix, squeezing chunks of crumble together to vary the size and make some larger chunks too. Mix the dark chocolate through the crumble mix.
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Distribute the crumble over the fruit and bake for about 1 hour or until bubbling, golden brown on top and the pears are tender. This crumble benefits from a longer time in the oven to really caramelise the pears – if you feel that the top is browning too fast, cover it with a piece of aluminium foil.
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Serve up with scoops of vanilla ice cream.
The recipe doesn’t say when and how to add the chocolate
Oops sorry! In with the walnuts into the crumble mix. Will amend it now, thanks for picking up