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Do you have any suggestion for how to make a pear & cranberry strudel?

Holiday Prep Made Easy

Fran Costigan - Holiday Prep Made Easy

Recorded

This event was on December 19, 2023

Prepare your kitchen for the upcoming holidays with practical advice and effective strategies with Chef Fran Costigan. She has tips for organizing and optimizing your cooking space, and suggestions for dessert components that you can make ahead. From smart storage solutions to time-saving kitchen trucs, she’s got you covered. Plus Chef Fran will help you stock your pantry with essential ingredients and holiday staples, ensuring you’re well-prepared to make recipes with ease. Here’s to getting our kitchen holiday-ready, for festivities without stress. Plus, bring your best question for the Q&A session at the end to ensure your holiday desserts are the best they can be!

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Question

CHERRYL RAVINA BROADBENT Broadbent

Do you have any suggestion for how to make a pear & cranberry strudel?

Answer

Well, strudel dough is a whole thing to make, but I believe you can buy it. And I used to make strudel using philo dough. Pear and cranberry is a filling that I cook to make my winter version of my blueberry slump. And both cranberries, cranberries have a lot of pectin in them, as you probably know, if you've ever cooked cranberries to make a cranberry sauce so that I would get the cranberries started with a sweetener. I sweeten my cranberry filling with fresh orange juice and zest and some maple syrup because I am avoiding granulated sweetener when I can, when it makes sense, not always. And then dice up the pears small so that they kind of match the size of the cranberries. Cook it until it's nice, taste it and see how it sets. And then go ahead and make your strudel with that. You can make that filling ahead, chill it, and then use it when you're ready to assemble your strudel. That sounds delicious.

Fran Costigan

Director of Vegan Pastry

FranCostigan.com

Fran Costigan is internationally renowned as the authority on vegan desserts. Trained at the New York Restaurant School and Natural Gourmet Institute, Fran was a chef in both traditional and vegan pastry kitchens before moving into teaching over 20 years ago. A lifelong chocoholic and long time vegan, Fran’s latest book, Vegan Chocolate: Unapologetically Luscious and Decadent Dairy Free Desserts, (Running Press 2013) is for all who madly, deeply love chocolate desserts, whether or not dietary considerations are an issue. Her previous cookbook, More Great Good Dairy-Free Desserts Naturally (Book Publishing Company 2006) is the basis of the Costigan Vegan Baking Boot Camp Intensive®. For more information, www.francostigan.com.