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Easy chocolate pear strudel

Easy chocolate pear strudel with cinnamon and almond flavor makes the perfect holiday dessert! Great warm or cold, made easily with phyllo pastry. Quick dessert!

A wonderful mix of fruit and chocolate in this easy-to-make strudel that uses store-bought dough, so you can save some time!

Ingredients

Scale
  • 4 pears (about 700g / 1.5 pounds): peeled, cored, finely chopped
  • 1/21 teaspoon almond extract (or 34 drops of LorAnn almond oil)
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 2 1/2 TBSPs cornstarch
  • 70g (1/3 cup packed) Demerara / light brown sugar
  • 2 TBSPs white granulated sugar
  • 100g (3.5oz) dark (50-55%) chocolate, roughly chopped
  • 6 sheets fillo (phyllo) dough (300g or 10.5oz package of dough)
  • 115g (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
  • a handful of almond flakes
  • Egg wash: 1 egg + 1 TBSP water, whisked
  • 12 TBSPs powdered sugar (for dusting)

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 190°C (375°F) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
  2. In a medium bowl, toss pears with almond extract. Stir in cinnamon, nutmeg, cornstarch, sugars and chocolate. Set aside.
  3. Lay a sheet of phyllo dough on a clean surface. Brush with melted butter and cover with another sheet of phyllo. Repeat with remaining sheets. (You can end up having some leftover melted butter.)
  4. You now have a rectangle of phyllo dough. Leaving a 3-cm (1-inch) border at the sides, place the mixture on one half of the dough lengthwise. Starting on the side with the filling, gently roll the pastry together, with the seam on the bottom. Pinch together the open sides, then tuck them under the strudel.
  5. Brush strudel with egg wash, sprinkle with almonds and bake for 30-35 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool for at least 15-20 minutes. Dust with powdered sugar before serving.
  6. Store leftover strudel in the refrigerator, covered with plastic wrap, and eat within 2 days.

Notes

When making this, you can use either almond extract or LorAnn almond oil. I actually use the latter, which has a very intense and wonderful flavor, so a few drops of this oil go a long, long way. You can get it on Amazon, in baking supply shops, etc.

If your pears are very juicy and you don’t want a softer filling, add a few tablespoons of breadcrumbs (or cookie crumbs) to the filling before baking. This will thicken the mixture. Personally, I find that I don’t need the crumbs.

About phyllo dough:
For this recipe I used a 300-gram (10.5-ounce) package of phyllo dough which consisted of 6 sheets.
However, know that different brands sell packages of various weights and/or number of sheets. For example, another brand of phyllo dough that I use sells 400-gram (14-ounce) packages of phyllo with only 4 sheets. So I get more dough overall, but less sheets and that’s perfectly fine!

If the only type of phyllo you get comes in larger sheets, you can easily use 4 sheets instead and simply spread out the filling more. Instead of rolling the pastry just once, you might do two rotations (since the dough is wider), which still results in a wonderful strudel.

If you cannot get phyllo anywhere, use puff pastry instead. However in that case, you might have to use less filling or just make several smaller strudels.