10/52 Crostata di Pere al Cioccolata

Another chocolate/fruit combination. Something that never gets boring.

At least I hope it also never gets boring for you, my readers.

So this one is a pear chocolate pie.
I saw it on the German TV show "Das perfekte Dinner" ("The perfect dinner") where each week, 5 strangers cook a 3-course meal for each other, one each day, at their homes. 

A couple of weeks ago, a girl named Sandy made an Italian-inspired dinner with this pie for dessert (served with vanilla parfait). The guests were not really over the moon about it but I thought it sounded good.

When a work colleague of mine mentioned last week that she absolutely loves pears, I thought of this recipe again and here we are:

Crostata di Pere al Cioccolata

Adapted from Sandy of "Das perfekte Dinner" (I don't know where she had the recipe from, so if you know the original source, please comment on this post)

Pie crust:

125 g (1.1 stick) butter

200 g (1.6 cup) flour

1 egg

125 g (0.6 cup) sugar

50 g  (1/2 cup) cocoa powder

Filling:

2-3 tablespoons orange marmalade

2-3 pears

Topping:

100 g dark chocolate

50 g (0.4 stick) butter

2 eggs

100 g (1/2 cup) sugar

• For the pie crust, knead together all ingredients. Roll out and put into a prepared pie form.
• Coat crust evenly with orange marmalade.
• Peel the pears, cut into wedges and arrange on crust.

• Preheat oven to 200 °C (390°F).
• For the topping, melt chocolate and butter over hot water.
• Separate eggs. Beat the egg whites until stiff. 
• In a separate bowl, mix egg yolks with sugar. Fold in melted chocolate and stiff egg whites until just combined. Pour over pears.
• Bake until topping is firm.

My modifications:

None. 

But as you can see above, the recipe did not give an exact baking time. I baked my pie for 30 minutes. A little longer would have been good for the crust but would have burned the topping. So my suggested modification is to blind-bake the crust. I knew I should have done it but then didn't... Next time I definitely will.

The result and taste:

It was a real problem to get a piece of this pie on a plate and still have it look like a piece of pie (and not some kind of chocolate mash with pieces of pear in it). I meant to take a piece to work to give to my colleague but there was no way of doing that.
Blind-baking the crust, using pears that are not very juicy, and baking the whole pie a bit longer would probably help.

But the taste! Half-baked chocolate cookie meets juicy pears meets mousse au chocolate. That's the best way to describe what my (half-baked, mushy) crostata di pere al cioccolata tasted like. Divine! 

Who needs looks when you can have all the taste? That's my conclusion for this week.

Did anything you ever baked not turn out quite as planned? But still tasted good? 
Please share!