As I finish up the last few recipes of our Dead Man’s Party BBQ theme where classic BBQ fare gets turned into icky body parts, I offer up another dessert idea. Severed Ears a la Mode began with the idea to use summer stone fruit to make a bloody ear fruit compote to serve with ice cream or a dollop of crème fraiche if you prefer something fancy. But after numerous attempts (at least 4x…yikes) trying to transform summer plums into ears, I just couldn’t get it to look right and abandoned the idea. But then, while at Sprouts Market a few days later, I found a container of dried pears that gave me hope that I could yet again give this creepy idea another whirl. So now…I’m grinning from ear to ear with this spooky version of wine poached pear compote because it turned out so bloody good! Check out the how to below. Enjoy!
Severed Ears a la Mode
Ingredients
- 10 dried pears
- 2 cups wine (half red wine and half white wine)
- ½ cup orange juice and a few strips of orange peel
- ⅓ cup sugar
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 4-5 whole cloves
- 1 quart vanilla ice cream
- 1 cup granola (optional)
Instructions
- Use a 1/4 teaspoon to round out the stem end of each pear to create an earlobe. Use the small teaspoon again to remove a small amount of the pear off center to where the seeds of the pear were removed to make a ear canal. Don't worry if its not too deep, after the fruit soaks for a while, the indentation will be pronounced or you can press it in a bit to make it more obvious. Use a paring knife to make a curved cut down one side of pear to remove some of the dried pear skin to create the severed side of the ear. Place prepared ears into a shallow pan.
- In a small sauce pan, add wine, sugar, orange juice and peel, cinnamon sticks and cloves and heat until the sugar is dissolved.
- Add wine mixture to the pears and refrigerate for about 2-3 hours. The longer it sits the pears will take up the red wine and get more red, so refrigerate until desired hue and when the fruit is rehydrated and soft.
- Remove pears from the pan and strain wine mixture with a fine mesh strainer into a small sauce pan. Discard spices and orange peel. Heat wine mixture and reduce until a syrup forms. Add pears into the warm syrup to heat through and then serve with a scoop of ice cream and drizzle with additional syrup and top with granola.
Fantastic! Delicious!
Thank you for being my biggest fan Jose! 🖤 Lori
I haven’t made it YET but I am screaming with glee at how amazing these look! I am beyond excited to have found this website and thank you for all these gorgeous and delicious recipes 🖤
Thank you Erika! I’m so glad you found me too and that you are enjoying my crazy recipe ideas. Makes me so happy!😄 Happy Halloween!
🖤Lori
For the life of me, I can’t wrap my brain around how to shape the ears from a tablespoon. Has anyone done this that could explain the process in a bit more detail? Thank you!
OOPs, just now seeing the video. Got it. How do we get the dried pears? Are there any that are already dried the we can buy in that shape?
I bought these dried pears from Sprouts Market, but I’m sure it would be easy to dry your own if you don’t have a Sprouts near you. Hope that helps.
Lori