Pear & Chocolate Crumble

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp cornflour (mixed with 1 tbsp water)
• 900g Conference pears, peeled, cored and sliced
• 75g soft brown sugar
• 50g unsalted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 120g plain flour
• 60g rolled oats
• 60g caster sugar
• 100g cold unsalted butter, cubed
• 20g unsweetened cocoa powder
• 100g dark chocolate, roughly chopped

Method

1. Heat the oven to 190°C (170°C fan) and butter a 20–22cm ovenproof dish.
2. Melt the butter with the soft brown sugar in a wide pan over medium heat until it looks glossy and smells like toffee, about 2 minutes — you're after a caramel note, not a hard caramel, so don't let it darken past chestnut.
3. Add the pear slices, the lemon juice and the vanilla. Cook gently for 5 minutes, turning once, until the pears soften at the edges but still hold their shape — Conference pears go to mush quickly, so pull them while they still have bite.
4. Stir in the cornflour slurry and bubble for 30 seconds until the syrup thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Taste the syrup — it should be sweet but lifted by the lemon juice; if it's flat, a tiny pinch of salt sharpens the toffee. Tip into the buttered dish and spread level.
5. For the crumble, rub the cold cubed butter into the flour, cocoa and a pinch of salt with your fingertips until the mix looks like coarse, dark crumbs. The salt is non-negotiable — it lifts the chocolate and stops the topping tasting one-note sweet. Work quickly so the butter stays cold; warm butter gives you paste, cold butter gives you craggy clumps.
6. Stir through the oats and caster sugar, then fold in the chopped dark chocolate so you get proper pockets of it through the topping. Taste a pinch of the dry crumble — adjust for salt now, before it goes in the oven.
7. Scatter the crumble evenly over the pears in clumps — don't pack it down, you want craggy peaks that will crisp up and shards of chocolate that will melt into seams.
8. Bake for 30–35 minutes until the topping is deep, dark golden and the pear filling is bubbling thickly at the edges. If the top looks set but you can't see bubbling at the rim, give it another 3–4 minutes — the bubble is your tell that the cornflour has done its job.
9. Rest for 5 minutes so the filling firms up slightly. Spoon into bowls, pour cold cream over the top so it pools into the cracks, and finish each portion with an extra grating of dark chocolate.