Technical Thursday: Paul's Mini Pear Pies

This week's GBBO Technical Challenge looked deceptively easy; after all it's just poached pears artfully wrapped in pastry. How hard can it be?

The answer: hard. It's Paul Hollywood's recipe so obviously it was never going to be a walk in the park!

The last time I made rough puff pastry it was a bit of a disaster so I was anxious from the beginning, and also having never poached a pear I was definitely entering this challenge blind! Unlike the bakers on the show I tackled these Mini Pear Pies with the full recipe (found here) and it's actually very simple. When taken slowly - without a time restraint and terrifying judges breathing down your neck - it's not too bad and yields ah-may-zing results. The recipe is on the BBC website above, and below with my notes and pictures.

Ingredients:

For the rough puff pastry:
200g plain flour, plus extra for rolling
100g butter, in a block, frozen
100g lard, in a block, frozen
1 free-range egg, beaten
2 tbsp granulated sugar

For the poached pears:
6 large, firm pears (preferably ones that are straight and tall)
300g caster sugar
500ml dry white wine
2 cinnamon sticks
1 orange, zest only

Method:

For the rough puff pastry, measure the flour into a bowl and grate the butter and lard into the flour.

Use a knife to coat the butter and lard in the flour. Add 120-150ml cold water and mix until it comes together to form a firm dough.

Roll out the pastry on a floured work surface to a rectangle. Fold the top third down and then fold the bottom third up and over. Turn it 90 degrees (a quarter turn) and repeat the rolling and folding. Set aside, covered, in the fridge for 20 minutes.

Repeat the rolling, folding and chilling twice more so you have a total of four folds and turns. Set aside, wrapped in cling film, in the fridge until ready to use.

While the pastry is in the fridge, turn to the pears.

Peel the pears, keeping the stems intact.

Tip the caster sugar into a large saucepan with 400ml water, the white wine, cinnamon and orange zest and slowly bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Boil for three minutes.

Add the pears to the pan. Bring back to the boil, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes.

Reserving the syrup, remove the pears from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside to cool on kitchen paper.

The recipe recommends using a melon baller, but as I didn't have one I made do with a sharp knife and improvised with a pair of fishbone tweezers. Remove the core from the pears and flatten the bottoms so they comfortably stand upright.

Return the syrup to the heat and boil rapidly for 10-15 minutes until the volume of the liquid is reduced by half and the syrup is thick. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

I had a slight disaster here. My syrup was too thick when I took it off the heat, and in my effort to cool it as quickly as possible I ended up solidifying it in the fridge. Epic fail. My mum and I tried rescuing it but to no avail, so I knocked up a mini second batch of the sugar syrup by halving the original ingredients. It wasn't infused by the pears, but at least this time it wasn't like a sugary super glue!

When the pears and syrup are cool, roll out the chilled pastry to a rectangle measuring roughly 60 x 20cm and a thickness of no more than 5mm.

Using a sharp knife and a ruler cut the pastry into long strips 8mm wide.

You will need about 20 strips.

Brush the pears with the cooled sugar syrup and starting from the bottom, wrap the pastry strips around the pears. When you come to the end of the pastry strip, brush the end lightly with syrup and press to adhere to the next pastry strip. Continue wrapping until you reach the top of the pear. Each pear uses about two and a half strips. Tuck the end of the last pastry piece behind the previous dough spiral.

Preheat the oven to 200C / 180C(Fan) / 400F / Gas 6. Place the pastry covered pears on a baking tray.

Brush the pastry with beaten egg and sprinkle with the granulated sugar. Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool for 10-15 minutes. Pour the reduced sugar syrup onto your serving plate then transfer the pies on top.

Apart from one that drooped a little in the oven and looked slightly drunk, the other five looked pretty good to me! The pastry didn't 'puff' as much as I would have liked, but there were still visible layers and it remained attached to the pear instead of sliding to the bottom like poor Richard's did.

I'm pretty chuffed with these! Apparently the pastry could have done with a little longer in the oven in order to make it crisper, but apart from that the response was really positive. I love how it's such a simple concept but looks really impressive and complicated!

I think this is my most successful Technical Challenge so far: maybe I'm getting better?! I can only dream…