I love to cook. I always have. Yet, with everything else going on in my life I never seem to have the time to try new recipes. That being said, when I heard my good friends were putting together a Gilded Fork Cookbook and were looking for people to test out the recipes I jumped right on the chance. I figured I'd write a post about the process and take some photos as well. It reminded me why I'm not a food photographer, but I still had fun and was pleasantly surprised with how the final presentation picture came out.

The recipe I chose was Poached Pears with Chocolate Raspberry Sauce. The kids got in on helping me make it.

The first thing we had to do was to peel some pears. I had never done this before but of course it's not that hard of a task to do.

I've also never poached a pear, so standing them up in the pot and filling it with the lemon zest, wine and other ingredients made for an interesting little cauldron of fun.

Even though I had taken the extra suggested tip of cutting a flat bottom in the pears, they still all fell over once the pot got simmering. I turned them a bit just to make sure they got evenly cooked.

Now, I'm not sure how soft a poached pear is suppose to be, but they felt way to firm after the time on the recipe so I gave them an extra 10 minutes. They were still harder then I would have liked. I'm wondering if it is because I didn't core them (couldn't figure out how to while leaving the stem on the top as directed) and the juice couldn't get inside.

Once the pears were done, I put them on a plate and outside in the frigid night air to cool down while we got the ingredients together to make the sauce.

I'm also a big fan of dark chocolate so we had a couple of half eaten bars that we mixed in this recipe. I was also happy to find good raspberries at the store. You never know this time of year what you might fine.

Emily helped me make the sauce and she found the concept of a double boiler pretty neat. It is always more fun to have an assistant in the kitchen.

I had no idea how to plate these up since there were no instructions in the recipe so Emily and I got creative.

The verdict? Being the first time I've ever had a poached pear it was different then I imagined. I liked them, but I think I would have liked them more if they were softer. I also think I want to try making them again but without the wine to see if more of the fruitiness of the pear comes through.

I can't wait to try my next recipe I'm going to test for them.