I hope your holidays were festive and fun. I did start off trying to post this before Christmas. But I got stuck and decided to stop. I started a new post about what I made and thought I could combine this post and my made post. Well, it didn’t happen. I’m back at it again. I wanted to share what I made.

I had a late start with my Christmas baking and spent a few days catching up. I initially thought I was going down the cookie route, but I turned to a few old favorites to share this year.

A Savory Bake

I used my favorite quiche recipe, Caramelized Onions and Zucchini Quiche. It was always a hit at my office parties. I had all the ingredients (well, almost) and had enough to make two. I used this quiche recipe from One Perfect Bite as my base. I tend to make it cheesier than the recipe calls for, and I ran out of milk, so I added heavy cream (how could that hurt it, haha).

Three Pears

I was going through old posts and realized I’ve been making this tart every year since we received a gift of Harry and David pears for the holidays. These were the last of the pears of this year’s gift. I kept them till they were very ripe and juicy. I found this recipe on the Chowhound forum years ago, but the link doesn’t take you to the recipe. I decided to add the recipe below the pictures. The tart is a combination of tart/cake. The juiciness of the pears creates a custard-like quality with the batter. Perfectly sweet.

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Laurie’s Pear Tart

The recipe was originally found on the Chowhound forum from Gallery Girl

Ingredients:
4 or so ripe, juicy pears, peeled, cored, and cut into sixths or eighths
1 stick butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Spray an 8-inch (important) spring form pan with Pam.

In a large bowl, cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla with an electric mixer. Add the eggs one at a time. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Incorporate it into the wet mixture.

Spread the batter into the pan. Now, in a pinwheel pattern, press the slices of pear, peeled side up, into the batter. Cram in as many as you can; since the batter rises and covers the pears, there are no points for style here. The more pears, the moister the cake will be.

Bake until a skewer comes out clean, about an hour. If you have any doubts, UNDERBAKE. This is a whole different animal if it dries out. Then it’s just a cake. Correctly done, you’ll love it. It’s just one of those recipes that is greater than the sum of its parts. really.

Sweet Potato Manju

Moving back home and becoming a caregiver for my parents made me want to make food that they loved, and I’m slowly learning to love, too. A lot of these foods are what I had as a kid. Probably, my taste palette wasn’t sophisticated enough to appreciate their deliciousness. Or what tell everyone, I didn’t like them before, I thought they were old lady food. But now that I’m an old lady, I love them. haha.

One of these foods that I now love is manju. Manju is a Japanese confection. It’s like a filled mochi or biscuit. Unlike mochi, the dough is made with wheat flour instead of rice. The filling is a sweetened paste made out of beans or sweet potato. I found this recipe for sweet potato manju from Keeping It Relle. And have kept it on the side waiting for the right moment to make it.

In my utter craze of holiday baking, I forgot to document one of the bakes (Sweet Potato Haupia pie) that led me to finally make this Manju recipe. I made too much potato and needed to do something with it. Ta Dah! I wish I could say what it tastes like, but my two roommates ate the last three pieces. But everyone I received it said it was good. The key to this recipe is to measure the filling and dough before you start. Both the dough and filling are very sticky. And it helps keep the manju clean and tidy.