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I love deep frying.  As long as I’m creating dessert menus, there will be a fried item included.  Customers seem to love them, too.  I still have people asking me about the Olive Oil Beignets.  Not every fried dessert I’ve tried has been a huge success.  The funnel cakes turned out to be just OK, and the brown butter beignets straight didn’t work.  I mostly base my doughnut ideas on pate choux, because I can pipe them, freeze them and fry from frozen.  This system works well because I normally have to make the batter only once a week.  A simple dipping sauce of creme anglaise or fruit coulis made it a no-brain pick up.  With the lackluster reception of the funnel cakes, I wanted to try something different.  I turned my Googles upon the humble fritter.  The simple, basic recipes I found reminded me right away of pancake batter.  Milk or water, eggs, flour, chemical leavener, flavorings.  I tried a couple of “meh” recipes before choosing the most simple.  A no frills apple fritter formula I found God knows where at God knows what wee hour of the morning through bleary search-engine eyes.  I thought this recipe was the most tweakable, and slightly tweak I did.  The original recipe called for milk as the liquid, and apples for the fruit.  I wanted to use pears, because I originally had bleu cheese in mind for the sauce.  I ended up using pear puree for half of the liquid volume (instead of all milk,) because the fruit flavor was faint at best.  I also tossed the diced pears in more pear puree, just to seal the deal.  These steaming balls of fried tree fruit batter are delicious.  Hot from the fryer they get tossed in cinnamon sugar, the smell is heady, as in it turns heads in the kitchen.  At this point, I started working on the sauce.  My first idea was a honey-roquefort creme anglaise.  Blue cheese and pears are thick as thieves, right?  A famous pearing pairing.  I bounced the idea off of Chef and he suggested I use Gorgonzola Dolce. I put together the simple custard based on David Lebovitz’s ice recipe in The Perfect Scoop. Spooning the warm cream into my mouth I almost puked.  The funky foot taste filled my sinus and the too sweet eggyness turned my stomach.  I stashed it in my low boy.  Somebody was getting got with that stinky mess.  It turned out to be Perez.  I called him over once the sauce was cooled to have a taste.  The look on his face was priceless.  Slowly nodding his head and trying not to grimace, he looked like as if he was going to spit it out, but didn’t want to offend me.  I burst out laughing in his face.  I love cooking.  Even the failures prove to be somehow useful. This is my second experiment with stinky cheese in a dessert, and the second not so good result.  I decided to go with a pear brandy caramel, using local a Clear Creek Distillers product.  Anyway, here’s the recipes. To fry these babies, spoon the batter into a 350 F deep fryer.  When they float to the top, note how they look like The Guardian from Big Trouble in Little China. Fry until golden brown and a knife comes out almost clean.  And watch out for Lo Pan.

Pear Fitters

makes one deep 6 pan

4 eggs

2/3 cup milk

2/3 cup pear puree

4 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1/4 oz salt

1 oz baking powder

4 cups diced pears

pear puree to coat pears

1. Whisk the eggs together with the milk and the pear puree in a large bowl.

2. Sift the dry ingredients into the bowl and mix to combine with a wooden spoon.

3. Dice the pears into a seperate bowl and toss them with enough pear puree to generously coat.

4. Fold the pears into the batter and either fry at 350 F until golden brown, or refigerate up to five days.

Pear Brandy Caramel

1 lb 8 oz sugar

10 oz corn syrup

10 oz butter

3 cups heavy cream

1/2 cup Clear Creek Pear Brandy (don’t sub the cheap shit)

1.  Caramelize the sugar and the corn syrup to a rich amber color.

2. Whisk in the butter, take care with the bubbling and frothing.

3. Whisk in the cream and return to a boil.

4. Remove from the heat and cool to room temperature, then whisk in the pear brandy.  Serve warm or store up to 1 month in the refigerator.