Poached Pears with Ganache & Peach Sorbet

I have the house to myself today so I'm catching up on a few things, sadly its mostly housework, but I'm also sorting back through a few photos. Well, I'm a little astonished to discover that I have not yet blogged about the most delicious dessert I made back in April! I'm pretty sure this was the evening we had friends around for dinner and I can't really remember what else I cooked, but I do remember this dessert!

For ages I had been wanting to learn how to poach pears, so I finally decided to give it a go. I have to say, the absolutely worst part of this whole process - coring the damn things out while keeping the stalks intact! What a mission! I got there eventually though and then proceeded to poach the pears in a delicious spicey sugar syrup. I've served them with a chocolate ganache I'd made earlier and then softened in the microwave for serving, and a homemade peach sorbet. Delicious! And really very easy!

I belatedly found some pics of the pears actually poaching.

Homemade Peach Sorbet

Simon gave me a Sunbeam Snowy Ice Cream maker for Christmas - a great suprise!

I spent much of Monday preparing the various bits and pieces required for both a Peach Sorbet and a Strawberry Ice Cream, after noting the glut of cream and strawberries in mum's fridge. However I didn't quite get around to doing the strawberry puree for the ice cream - I'd already done sugar syrup, peach puree and vanilla custard by that stage, so had really had enough. Consequently, Peach Sorbet was the first up!

Here's Snowy in action, churning the peach, sugar syrup, lemon juice up into sorbet....

And here's the absolutely delicious end result - the best peach sorbet I've ever tasted! Very impressed!