Vanilla and Pear Centre Ingredients

• 3 Pears
• Juice of 1 Lemon
• 1 Vanilla pod

Mascarpone Mousse Ingredients

• 100g Boiled Cream
• 100g Sugar
• 1 Vanilla pod
• 2 Gelatine leaves
• 300g Mascarpone
• 425g Whipping Cream

Siocled and Cocoa Butter Ingredients

• 100g White Siocled
• 100g Cocoa butter
• 3g Green food colouring
• 3g Brown food colouring
• 3g Cocoa powder

Step 1 – Pear & Vanilla Centre

1. Peel the pears and place directly in a bowl of water with a little lemon juice (this will prevent the pear from oxidising and becoming brown).
2. Dice half the pears into 1.5cm squares and blend the other half into a fine puree.
3. Mix the puree and the diced pears together with the seeds of 1/2 a vanilla pod. Do not discard the pod.
4. Place the mixture into semi-sphere silicone moulds and freeze.

Step 2 – Vanilla Mascarpone Mousse

1. Boil Cream and sugar in a pan with the seeds from other half of the vanilla pod and the empty pod.
2. Add gelatine that has been bloomed in ice water and pour over the mascarpone. Hand blend well.
3. Add the rest of the raw cream to this mixture, blend well and allow to set in the fridge overnight.

Step 3 – Assemble the Pear Shape

1. Once the pear insert has frozen, take two semi-spheres and stick them together to form a full sphere.
2. Whip the mascarpone mousse until silky and smooth.
3. Pipe some mousse into slightly larger semi-sphere moulds and press the frozen pear insert in the middle. Allow to freeze (should only take 10 minutes).
4. Pipe more mousse into the slightly larder semi-sphere mould and press the other half into it to complete the whole sphere of mousse and insert. Allow to freeze.
5. Pipe a decent amount of mousse on top of the frozen sphere and use a spatula to sculpt the shape of a pear. Allow to freeze.

Step 4 – Prepare the Siocled and Cocoa Butter

1. Melt one part white Siocled and one part Cocoa Butter together and blend well.
2. Add a pistachio-green colour and blend again.
3. Add a pinch of brown food colour and simply mix in with a fork, allowing some of the powdered colouring to form spots throughout the mix.
4. Allow the mix to cool to 30 degrees Celsius before dipping the frozen pear into the Siocled.
5. Allow the Siocled to set (should only take a few seconds) before brushing blemishes of cocoa powder in various spots around the pear.

Step 5 – Siocled Stalk

1. Pipe a small line of tempered Siocled on some baking parchment.
2. Allow to set before placing on top of the pear.

Allow the whole cake to defrost – should take overnight usually – before cutting into it.