I was searching for a honey dessert for Diane’s Friday Foodie Fix and all I could come up with was our granola recipe and the Greek yogurt with honey and almonds that I love for breakfast and dessert. Then I remembered the bottle of Honey Mead from our tour of Valley Vineyards and the search was on for mead recipes. I didn’t realize mead could be used in dressings and marinades and to drizzle on cake in trifle. The recipes that caught my eye were the poached pears and then I found one where the whipped cream that topped the poached pear was also flavored with mead. Browsing through a magazine(I can’t remember which) I saw a trifle of pears, ginger snaps and vanilla pudding. That led to my creation.
I poached the pears in mead and honey with some cinnamon sticks that had the kitchen in a cloud of cinnamon. Then I added mead to the whipping cream that I sweetened with honey. Finally I added mead to a vanilla pudding with honey as the sweetener. These were layered with crushed gluten-free Pamela’s Ginger Snaps to make a honey and mead infused trifle. I used a light touch with the mead and it all came together with just a hint of the winey, honey flavored mead that didn’t overpower the sweetness and flavor of the perfectly ripe pears. So, I got two beautiful desserts that could have been even more if the separate pears, custardy vanilla pudding made in my Vitamix and the flavored whipping cream were combined in different ways.
If you have a Vitamix, use the Vanilla Pudding recipe, but add 2 teaspoons of mead instead of vanilla and use 1/3 cup honey for the sweetener. If you are making a stove top pudding or creme anglaise, again, use the mead instead of vanilla and use honey to sweeten. A note on the Vitamix pudding recipe. It is gluten-free and uses potato starch as the thickener.
For the whipping cream add 1 tsp mead and 1 tsp honey along with 1/3 cup powdered sugar to a pint of heavy whipping cream and beat until you have whipped cream.
For the pears:
Use 2 ripe pears, peeled, halved, and cored, keep stem in
1 cup mead
1/4 cup water
3 Tbs honey
2-3 cinnamon sticks( to taste)
Simmer all ingredients in a shallow pan until pears are soft-about 7-10 minutes.
Serve the cooled pears with whipped cream and a drizzle of the now thickened poaching liquid.
Or layer gingersnap crumbs, pudding, pears and whipped cream to make individual trifles.
Mead has been around since the ancient Egyptians and I always think of Beowulf or Lord of The Rings and ancient mead halls. This is my more modern take on mead. If you don’t happen to have a bottle of mead in your kitchen, use vanilla to flavor your pudding, then use ripe fruit and whipping cream to layer for a trifle with gluten-free cookie crumbs or cubes of gluten-free cake.
Join Diane at The W.H.O.L.E Gang for more honey recipes. Shirley from Gluten Free Easily has a bunch listed for the roundup. She has bees and her own honey so she should have some good ones.
