TWD: Fold-Over Pear Torte

What a strange little hybrid dessert this was.

It uses pie dough, but it's baked in a springform pan. The filling is chopped fresh pears, and pecans, and dried apricots. It's all held together with a vanilla custard, and then the pie crust is partially folded over the edges. So many things going on! It's like five different desserts got together and had a baby and named it Fold-Over Pear Torte--confusing in and of itself, since isn't a torte a European cake?--and baked it in my oven for fifty kajillion minutes during which butter leaked out of the pan and burned in the oven and filled the kitchen with stinky smoke and....somewhere along the way this sentence turned from a convoluted simile into straightforward whining. Apologies!

At the end of the day, this was better than I thought it would be, but I admit my expectations were low because it seemed so random. The truth is, most of these elements are not my favorite things--cooked pears and custard and pie crust, to name a few--so it probably didn't have a chance at winning my heart. The hubs and I were both pleasantly surprised at how not-gross it was, to give you the world's most lukewarm endorsement.


The real problem, of course, is that it's not a looker, and we all know how I like to judge books by their cover.

What did everyone else think? Were you able to see past the ugly duckling exterior and devour the tasty swan inside?*

*This time, it's a metaphor that's gone awry. Forgive me.