Recipe: Pear Mouses
By kristin on Friday, August 10th, 2007
I remember making pear mouses with my Grandma Pratt in Birmingham, MI when I was little (in the early 1980’s), but these are somewhat different. Here’s how to make the Serafini Pear Mouse:
BODY:
• 1/2 a fresh, ripe bartlett pear, peeled and cored
Cut wedges into the pear half where the ears will go. Also, fill the cored out part of the pear half with a blob of cashew butter. This will stick the pear to the plate so it doesn’t move all over the place when you are trying to make the mouse face. Cashew butter is much stickier than peanut butter.
EARS:
• thin slices of red plum with skin on
Obviously, you can make a lot of mouse ears from one plum. If you are only making a few pear mouses, you can eat the rest of the plum while you are in the kitchen.
EYES:
• 2 whole cloves, stuck into the pear
NOSE:
• 1 whole raspberry, filled with cashew butter
Stick the raspberry onto the small end of the pear half. See how the little hairs in the raspberry make adorable wiskers for your pear mouse? And the red nose matches the ears and the tail in a nice way…)
TAIL:
• 3-4 inch section of red beet leaf stem
It’s handy if you happen to be having a beet dish with the meal, but if you don’t have beet stems available, you could always be creative and use something like a string bean, or a long carrot peeling for the tail instead.
(Also, the eyes and the tail of the pear mouse are two parts I wouldn’t necessarily recommend eating…)
