Poires à la Carignan (Pears Filled with Chocolate Bombe Mixture)

Ingredients

• Very fine dessert pears
• Vanilla syrup
• Bombe au chocolat pralinée composition
• Génoise
• Apricot cooked to the thread
• Chocolate fondant
• Pâte sèche
• Anisette
• Pralined slivered almonds
• Pulled sugar (for stalks and leaves)

Instructions

1. Turn the pears evenly and cook them in a vanilla syrup, keeping them a little firm; drain them on a dish and let them cool.
2. When quite cold, trim them flat at the base, mark the diameter of the opening underneath with a plain round cutter and hollow them out with a root-spoon.
3. Fill the inside with a Bombe au chocolat pralinée composition.
4. Close the opening with a small round of génoise cut with the same cutter.
5. Set the pears on a tray, coat them briskly with apricot cooked to the thread, glaze them with chocolate fondant and keep them 3 hours in a well-iced cooler.
6. Prepare as many small square génoise bases as there are pears, their sides about half a centimetre larger than the greatest diameter of the pears.
7. Soak these bases with anisette and stick each, with apricot cooked to the thread, onto another very thin base of pâte sèche of the same dimensions.
8. Coat the assembled bases with the same apricot and garnish them all round, and at the corners on top, with pralined slivered almonds.
9. At serving, set the pears on the bases, stick a pulled-sugar stalk with one or two leaves into each, and arrange on a napkin.