The best thing about making Pear & Cream Cheese Turnovers on a cold Sunday morning is that your apartment gets all toasty-warm and filled with a delicious, sugary smell for hours afterwards. Serve these alongside some coffee and the Times and…well, it just doesn’t get much better.
(Can you see the steam rising from the turnover pictured above? Yummmm….)
PEAR & CREAM CHEESE TURNOVERS (makes 4)
What you need:
2 small pears
1/2 tsp lemon juice
3 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp flour
4 tbsp cream cheese*
1 puff pastry sheet
1 egg
White sugar for sprinkling
What you do:
1. Sprinkle a sheet of parchment paper with sugar and lay out 1 sheet of thawed puff pastry. Cut into four squares of equal size. I forgot to defrost the puff pastry in the refrigerator overnight, so I just laid it out on sugared wax paper in a sunny spot until it was nice and pliable.
2. Peel and thinly slice pears. My pears weren’t quiiiiite as ripe as I would’ve liked, but it turned out not to matter at all (it may even have been a good idea in the mushiness department).
3. In a small bowl, combine pears, lemon juice, brown sugar, cinnamon, and flour. Mix together lightly.
4. On one side of each puff pastry square, place 1 tbsp cream cheese and 1/4 of the pear mixture (you can’t see the cream cheese in this shot, but it’s there – just hidden under the pears). The amount of pear mixture pictured above is actually a little much, FYI; when I started folding over the pastry squares (step 6) I realized that I needed to take out a bit of the filling to get the edges to meet. This, however, is actually quite the ideal situation, because then you have leftover filling that you can munch on while you wait for the turnovers to bake.
5. In another small bowl, whisk the egg with 1 tsp of water. Lightly brush the edges of each square with the egg mixture.
6. Fold each square along the diagonal. Like I said, you may need to fiddle around a bit with the placement or amount of filling to get the sides to meet.
7. Press the edges together with your fingers, and then go over them with the tines of a fork as pictured above.
8. Sprinkle a little sugar over the tops and bake in a 400F oven for 20 minutes.
9. Serve warm!
*You can also make these without the cream cheese. But then they’re just Pear Turnovers.
