You know what there should be more of? Recipes for desserts to serve one. You don’t really come across single serve dessert recipes too often, because well, it would be a major pain in the bum to measure out the quantities to bake/cook to do so. For instance, imagine a chocolate mousse recipe for one. The quantities of the ingredients required would read something like: 40g chocolate, 50ml of cream, half an egg… you get my drift. It’s just ridiculous.

After thinking about it for a while, I set out in creating an easy winter dessert recipe that could serve one without being too much of a bother to prepare. I struggled for a while re-calculating a few of my favourite recipes, but a lot of them required eggs and after a few conversions, I realised that I wasn’t going to measure out a third of an egg or whip up a tablespoon of cream.

But after staring at my too-ripe pears on my kitchen bench, I knew what would work brilliantly… a pear crumble! It’s one of the easiest recipes to prepare (all using your fingers), it can be made for one and the recipe below can be adjusted to serve two, three or as many as you like!

Maybe I should set out in creating a book of recipes that only make one serving. How’s this for a possible title: “Desserts by yourself… literally” :p

Crunchy Pear Crumble

1 large ripe pear, peeled and diced

1 teaspoon of brown sugar

Crumble

½ cup rolled oats

¼ cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons plain flour

40g of unsalted butter, softened

good sprinkle of ground cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
2. In your serving bowl, toss together the chopped up pear and teaspoon of sugar.
3. In another small bowl, mush together all the crumble ingredients, making sure it’s kind of lumpy.
4. Sprinkle the crumble mix over the pears and bake for around 15 minutes or until the fruit is soft and the crumble is golden brown.

Serve with vanilla ice-cream or thick cream.

Serves one.