Cinnamon & honey baked pears with coffee walnut ice-cream and oaten lace biscuits

My contender for the best dessert you will eat all autumn

Pears, cinnamon, honey, oats, butter, coffee, walnut. If these were the flavours listed as the notes in a bottle of red wine I would pour a glass right now. They are instead the deliciousness that make up this dessert in three parts. Each of them is its own seasonal delight, but together? Together they’re a mouthful of late autumn / early winter at its best. Presenting:

Cinnamon & honey baked pears with coffee walnut ice-cream and oaten lace biscuits

You have no idea how much I wish I had better food styling / photography skills. Then rather than just showing you the biscuits cooling on a rack I could plate this up all together prettily and shoot it and you would immediately see its collective gorgeousness. Maybe one day I’ll put this recipe into a book and it will be shot. But until then, I’m going to need you to use your taste imagination*.

It shouldn’t be hard: We’re talking about baked pears whose creamy, buttery, sweet flesh has been enhanced with honey and ground cinnamon. That gentle spicing is going to love cosying up to the coffee and walnut ice cream – a flavour combination well known to cake-lovers as an absolute winner.

The softness of the baked pear and ice cream need something more substantial alongside. Shortbread would be good. Maybe a ginger snap. Best of all are, I think, these oaten lace biscuits. They’re made with porridge oats for a sort of winter breakfast / bowl-of-Ready-Brek-before-school feel that takes a surprisingly elegant turn once they’re baked into their laced effect and taco-esque curled up shape. Their chewy toffee-ness is just fabulous with the rest of the dish.

I strongly – strongly – believe that this has to be a contender for the best dessert you will eat all autumn.

The only last thing to say before we get to the actual recipe(s) if that if it seems like a lot of work to be making three things for one dessert take comfort in knowing each element can be made ahead of time - and that the effort is absolutely worth it.

(Jacky Robinson, one of our community here, has posted this week interesting thoughts about the ‘need’ – or not – for food photography to accompany recipes and posed a question we talked about together at our Ask me anything zoom the other week: Do recipes in a cookbook need to be accompanied by a photograph?)

Cinnamon & honey baked pears with coffee walnut ice-cream and oaten lace biscuits

Serves 6 (with biscuits and perhaps ice-cream to spare)