Toffee Blossom Pears

You've seen toffee apples but how about toffee pears? Make the most of this season's most abundant fruit by coating them in crisp toffee and flowers!

I bought some pears the other day and I wondered what it would be like to toffee them. They were crisp hard and not quite sweet enough so I dipped them in toffee and affixed some edible flowers to them. The flowers are really for decoration and aren't strictly necessary but I figure most of the things that I eat aren't strictly necessary anyway!

Although I am admittedly very clumsy Mr NQN constantly warns me about one thing that I am never in danger of doing.

"Don't fall off the bed," he will say if I am lying on the bed reading or talking to him. Our bed is quite high but it's not of Princess and the Pea proportions.

"I've never fallen off a bed, even when I was little and I slept on the top bunk" I tell him.

And no matter how many times I insist, he will start warn me about falling off the bed. I give him a look and say patiently, "I know where the edge of the bed is and I won't fall off honey, do not worry."

That doesn't mean that I am above giving warnings when they aren't necessary. There is one thing that I do warn him about constantly - when I am making toffee. "Watch out!!" I say as if I am transporting plutonium from the pot to the sink. He always looks at me oddly. He rarely ventures into the kitchen anyway so it really is a moot point.

So tell me Dear Reader, do you often eat things because of want over need? And do you ever give warnings that aren't strictly necessary? And have you ever fallen off a bed?

Toffee Blossom Pears

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott/Not Quite Nigella

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 25 minutes

• 2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cups water
• 1/4 cup liquid glucose
• Red food colouring gel
• 6 hard Corella or small pears
• 12 bamboo skewers
• Non stick oil spray
• Dusky pink gum paste
• Balling tool
• Cornstarch
• Yellow colouring gel
• Fine paintbrush

Step 1 - First make the fondant blossoms as they will need to dry. Roll out fondant on a clean, flat surface sprinkled with cornstarch. Cut out using a flower or blossom cutter and then using a balling tool, press down gently in the centre so that the petals stand up a little. Allow to dry and set completely hard (gum paste sets quicker than fondant).

Step 2 - Line a baking tray with parchment and spray with non stick oil spray. Heat the sugar, water, glucose and colouring gel in a heavy based saucepan and do not stir. Allow to come to a boil until it reaches the hard crack stage at 150C/302F. Meanwhile stick two bamboo skewers in each pear in the top.

Step 3 - When the toffee has reached the temperature, turn it down to low and dip the pears in the toffee one at a time. Carefully affix two blossoms to the toffee as soon as you dip it-otherwise it sets and they won't stick. Place each pear on the prepared tray. Repeat with the rest of the pears.