Stuff the candy canes in the stockings, not your mouth. Instead, finish your holiday meal with a show-stopping and deceptively simple dessert of whole fruit. Guests each receive a dish with their own apple, pear or plum, ending the meal on an elegant (and easy) note.
1. Simple and elegant, these Spiced Poached Pears get some added holiday magic when you sprinkled them with a surprise ingredient: black pepper.
2. Poached Plums are a perfect make-ahead dessert. Poach the pretty stone fruit in sherry and apple juice the night before, then served chilled and garnished with sugared almonds and a twist of lemon.
3. You know what goes perfectly with apples? More apples. Hollow them out and fill with cinnamon-scented crisp in this recipe for Apple Crisp-Stuffed Apples. Want to really take it over the top? Serve with cinnamon ice cream.
4. You could spend two hours peeling, coring and slicing pears to assemble and bake a holiday crisp. Or you could just slice in half, top with nuts and oats, bake and be done in 30 minutes with this recipe for Baked Pears with Pistachios and Cardamom. -pear photo by Carmen Troesser
This article appears in December 2014.