Weekend Treats #2: Pear 'Speculaas' Pie

I felt like baking this weekend and since my 'Weekend Treats #1' was quite some time ago, I am taking this opportunity to share with you the second edition. It's a Dutch recipe with Speculaas and Speculaas spices. A typical Dutch cookie and a mix of spices. So if you're not in Holland or Belgium, the ingredients might be a bit of a challenge.

This is what you need:

- 150 grams of butter

- 100 grams of almond paste

- 4 eggs

- 100 grams of all purpose flour

- 4 small sweet pears

- 1 tbsp lemon juice

- 1 tbsp Speculaas spices

- 100 grams of Speculaas cookies (crumbled)

- a pinch of salt

- 5 tbsp orange marmalade

Extra: rectangular cake/pie pan & lining paper

And this how you make it:

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees. Remove the skin from the pears and cut them in half. Leave the stem on, but take the seeds out. Sprinkle them with the lemon juice.

Mix the butter and the almond paste into a smooth mixture. Stir in the eggs one by one. Then add the Speculaas spices, a pinch of salt and the flour. When the mixture is ready, gently mix in the crumbled Speculaas cookies. 

Line the cake pan with the lining paper (if you lay it along the long side of the pan in one piece, you can easily pull up the pie when it's cooked). Pour the mixture into the pan and lay the pears on top with the round side up (my 25 cm pan was too small for all the pears to fit in...)

Bake the pie for 40 minutes. Take it out of the oven and cover the top with a bit of marmalade. Put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes. Let it cool before you take it out of the pan. 

Enjoy! 

This recipe is based on this one from Allerhande. (It looks a lot prettier there...)