This year I received a lovely Harry and David gift basket from a vendor with a bunch of fresh pears.  I love pears, but we had so many I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them!  I decided to contribute to our family Christmas brunch with a fun holiday pear tart!

After searching through a million Pinterest recipes, I settled on a hybrid of recipes from 365 Days of Baking and Food Network (with my own holiday twist :))

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces of cream cheese, softened (I used Neufchatel)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 1 package (2 sheets) puff pastry sheets, thawed
• 3 medium pears, peeled and sliced
• 1 Tbl lemon juice
• 1 Tbl plus 1 tsp cornstarch
• 3 Tbl brown sugar
• 1/8 tsp cinnamon
• Optional topping: honey and sugar

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees
• Prepare the cream cheese filling by combining the cream cheese, one egg, and the almond extract until smooth.  Set aside

• Prepare the pear topping by combining your sliced pears, lemon juice, cornstarch, brown sugar, and cinnamon.  Set aside

• Beat the remaining egg into a bowl and set aside for the egg wash

• Spread-out the puff pastry sheets, setting one on top of the other.  Using a pizza cutter, cut into the shape of a Christmas tree (or if you aren’t doing this for Christmas, I would cut the sheets in half, length-wise making two pastries).

• With the remaining puff pastry sheet, cut two stars using a cookie cutter
• Set one sheet aside, and cover one of the sheets with your cream cheese filling, leaving 1/2 inch or so along the eges

• Place the second sheet on top, and gently press/fold the edges creating a pocket for the topping, together then top with the egg wash
  *Note you can make smaller tarts with any remaining dough/filling/topping so you don’t waste!  You can also cut-out more stars, etc. to put on top of the tart to add to the presentation

• Finally top the tart with the pear mixture.  Sprinkle some sugar/drizzle some honey over the tart (optional), and bake around 20 minutes on a parchment-lined cookie sheet until the tart is flaky and slightly browned.
• Viola, you have a lovely Christmas tart!

I adapted the tart to make it festive, but you could easily re-create our Christmas brunch for any winter occasion (menu below)!

• Ham (a Christmas staple)
• Mini Egg Quiches (similar to this recipe from Kitchen Snaps)
• a Winter Fruit Salad (similar to this recipe from Bloglovin)
• And of course the fixings for Bloody Mary’s and Mimosas!

I hope you enjoyed your holiday celebrations!

Megan