I'm ba-ack!

Hi there!  It's been over 4 months since I last posted anything.  I've been learning about stuff in this time and living life, but I haven't blogged.  But we are about to lose "The Food Cube" at work, so I had to take one last thing into the office on Friday for old time's sake.  The Food Cube has been the empty cube in front of my cube where I served all of the Baking Friday treats last year.  Well we have someone moving into The Food Cube this week - there's a phone there and everything!  So no more Food Cube.  Sigh.

Beyond that, I've been craving pear and chocolate recently.  Have you ever done these two together?  You should.  You totally should.  Apple and chocolate, not so much.  But pear and chocolate go very nicely together.  So I made these!

What are these?  Well the things on each end could be called something fancy like Pear Chocolate Gallettes - or you could just call them Pear Chocolate Tarts.  And the things in the middle could be called Pear Chocolate 'Ssants' - short for Pear Chocolate Croissants.  We can thank sweet little O-man for their shortened name.  But hey, croissants is about a $4 word for a 3-year old!

These are so easy peasy, there isn't a recipe.  And yes, I cheated.  I did not make either dough from scratch.  (Gee, Deb, you go over 4 months without posting and then you give us a cheating recipe?!  LAME!!!)  Eh, what can I say?  When you're right, you're right.

Here is what I did.  I took a package of frozen puff pastry dough for the tarts and a can of crescent roll dough for the "Ssants".  I also thinly sliced up a couple of ripe pears.  I made a cream cheese mixture of:

4oz softened cream cheese
1/4 cup softened butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 - 2 t. cinnamon (or to taste)
Dash of salt
Splash of vanilla

Mix this all together until smooth.

For the puff pastry ones, I cut each sheet of the thawed dough into 9 squares.  I spread a bit of the cream cheese mixture over most of each square, added a couple of slices of pear, sprinkled on a bit of cinnamon sugar and then added some mini chocolate chips on top.  (Oh, and I added a spread of some Nutella on some of them, too!)

For the croissant ones, I spread the cream cheese mixture over each separated triangle, put a pear slice on the wide end, sprinkled on some mini chocolate chips and rolled them up.  (Yes, some had a smear of Nutella over there, too!  Cause I live wild and crazy like that!)

I baked them at 350 for about 25 minutes or until done, and then drizzled them with a vanilla glaze.

I put them on a plate....

...and then we ate them!

And we all lived happily ever after. The End.

Except we have to find a new Food Cube!!!