Non-alcoholic poached pears with New Orleans bitters, brownie & vanilla whipped cream

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The holidays are rapidly approaching which is usually when I’m most creative when it comes to new recipes. Poached pears are very common in Belgium as a Christmas dessert but I honestly never made it myself. It’s most commonly poached in red wine, but my non-alcoholic version uses New Orleans bitters with some extra orange and lemon. Being pregnant of course means not consuming any alcohol but even before I didn’t really drink often. You could also cook the pears with this non-alcoholic red wine but I wanted to go for a very light syrup for this recipe as it’s being peared (hehe) with brownies and whipped cream which already make it a quite heavy dessert.

It’s very easy to make but you do need to use the right pears. If they are already too soft they’ll just turn to mush when you poach them. If they are unripe they will not be very pleasant to eat even after poaching them. I prefer conference pears myself as they don’t require a long cooking time and hold their shape well. Note that you can replace the sugar with honey or maple syrup.

You can get the New Orleans bitters here:

• All The Bitter – Non-Alcoholic Bitters travel pack (contains 3 different flavours)

• or All The Bitter – Non-Alcoholic New Orleans Bitters (contains the New Orleans flavour only).