Pear-Almond Crisp

Apple crisp is a delicious and adored fall staple.  As you can imagine, I make my fair share of apple crisps in the fall. And apples are great, not just great, amazing and scrumptious.  You would be hard pressed to find someone who loves apples more than myself, BUT I do find that there is an injustice in the “pome fruit” world. If you haven’t noticed, pears are apples’ sad redheaded nerd cousin, perfectly pleasant, but not as popular.  Pears just can’t seem to compete.  So when I first made pear crisp, I was a little surprised at the response it received.  My family actually seemed to prefer pear crisp to apple crisp.  “Amazing” I thought to myself, pears finally catch a break.  So this is the recipe for the crisp that boosted the self esteem of pears everywhere.

For the filling:

5 large Comice pears (cut into bite sized pieces)

2 Mutsu apples (cut into bite sized pieces) –to give the crisp some structure

3 Tbsp cornstarch

2 Tbsp brown sugar

2 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

For the topping:

½ cup salted butter (melted)

½ cup rolled oats

1 cup flour

1 cup almond meal

¾ cup sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Mix all ingredient of the filling in a large bowl, making sure that cornstarch is evenly distributed.  Then place mixture in a 13x9 baking dish.  Prepare the topping by melting the butter and then stirring in the rest of the ingredient, and then place on top of the filling.  Bake for about 40 minutes.  Serve warm with ice cream.