Pear Tart with Caramel Sauce

Ingredients

Crust

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/4 cup blanched slivered almonds

1/4 teaspoon salt

8 T (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 large egg yolk

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

Pear Layer

5 pears, quartered, cored, peeled, and sliced

1/3 cup sugar

1 Tbsp.lemon juice

Caramel Sauce

1/3 cup packed brown sugar

3 tablespoons sour cream

2 tablespoons butter, softened

2 teaspoons water

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Crust

Blend powdered sugar, almonds, and salt in processor until nuts are finely ground. Add butter and blend with pastry blender. Mix in egg yolk. Add flour. Blend until dough comes together in clumps. Press into tart pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray.

Pear Layer

In a large bowl toss pear slices with sugar and lemon juice. Arrange pear slices on crust. Pour all juice on bottom of bowl on top. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.

Caramel Sauce

To prepare sauce, combine 1/3 cup brown sugar, sour cream, and 2 tablespoons softened butter in a small, heavy saucepan over medium-high heat; bring to a boil. Cook 1 minute or until thickened. Remove from heat; stir in 2 teaspoons water. Drizzle on top of baked tart at desired temperature (warm, hot or cool).

**Notes on Alterations**

I think you only need 1/3-1/2 the amount of sauce it makes to get the desired look & taste. So, that's a good place to cut out some sugar/butter if that is something you want to do. I put it all on, but it was quite a lot.

The original recipes I was basing this on (3 different ones) were altered so that the crust had less butter and the pear layer had less sugar. You might even be able to experiment and take out another tablespoon or two of butter from the crust and could probably get away with a 1/4 C sugar in the pear layer.

I used regular sour cream, but you could probably use light or fat free to save more on calories without compromising on taste, but since they tend to be not as thick you might not need to add the water the recipe calls for.

With all those notes, they way I made it was FANTASTIC and the way I made it is the above ingredients & directions.

Pear Sauce

This is the pear sauce recipe I followed - loosely - this morning when I made this. Although, it was 10 pounds of pears I used and only used 3/4 C of sugar total, and no cinnamon. I am planning on serving this to baby boy this winter and I didn't want the cinnamon flavor in there initially. I thought about not using any sugar, but it needed a little to help balance out the lemon juice (which helps prevent browning). I don't think 3/4 C of sugar in 10 pounds of pear sauce is really too bad.