Pears in a rich caramel-honey sauce

Fresh pears with a rich caramel-honey sauce - a lovely dessert recipe, very quick and easy to make at any time of the year.

You will need:-
One pear per person - use firm, ripe, pears. Comice are good.

For each pear:-

• 1 oz butter
• 1 tbsp. honey
• Sprinkle of ground cinnamon

Fruity Beef Meatballs with Curried Banana Sauce

This recipe works so brilliantly that I thought I'd share it. It is good as a meal on its' own, or can be served alongside a variety of other curries. It will work if you use only the pre-prepared curry powder, but the extra spices give a richer flavour.

serves 2 - 4 people

You will need:
Shallow ovenproof dish
frying pan
food processor (not essential, but it's the easiest way to prepare the date, apple and onion mixture)

Ingredients

Meatballs:

• 2 medium onions
• 2 apples
• 8 pitted dates
• about 500g beef mince
• about 1 tbsp dried breadcrumbs
• salt
• ground mixed pepper

Caramelised pineapple dessert

A delicious, and very quick and easy, dessert recipe using fresh pineapple and honey which can be used as a topping for meringue baskets, a basis for tart tatin or in a tasty trifle.

Ingredients

• 1/2 pineapple, cored and cut into bite-sized pieces
• 2 -> 3 tablespoons good honey
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon (small pinch) of either five spice powder or ground star anise

Blackcurrant and Honey Jam

I tasted some Blackcurrant and Honey Jam, having ambushed a Class winner after a recent Honey Show. It had the usual slightly tart flavour of blackcurrants with an added, but quite subtle, aftertaste of good quality, strong, honey. It was absolutely delicious.

As there was a decent crop of blackcurrants this year, more than needed to add flavour to basic apple pies, I decided to make some of this jam myself.

The recipe I used isn't quite the same as the one I was given, because when I checked online there were several versions, each with a different ration of fruit:sugar:water. I decided to keep to the ratios I've always used for blackcurrant jam.