Don’t worry, this isn’t a recipe for how to make homemade yogurt (though I have done that before and it is tasty but to me it wasn’t worth the effort).  We had a big container of plain yogurt in the fridge for some Indian food we were making, and we had a lot of extra so I decided to make a breakfast yogurt out of some of the extra.  I had some sort of ripe pears in the house, so they became the fruit for my yogurt.

Step 1:

Slice one pear longways into fairly thin slices.

Step 2:

Heat about 3 tbsp of butter in a skillet over medium high heat.  When the butter has melted, add the pears and 1/4 tsp of cardamom (or cinnamon, if you don’t have cardamom).  Stir the pears and let them cook until they are fairly soft. The cooking time will depend on how ripe your pears were to begin with.  When the pears can be poked with a fork without resistance, add a quarter cup of brown sugar and stir to combine.  When the sugar has melted and has started to thicken, turn the heat off.   At this point, you can use this mixture as a great topping for vanilla ice cream.  You can even make it up to this point and refrigerate it and then re-heat before serving.

Step 3:

Mix 1.5-2 cups plain yogurt with about 1/4-1/2 tsp of vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste and stir well.  You could instead use vanilla flavored yogurt, but the vanilla extract will give you a much better vanilla taste, especially if you use good quality Mexican vanilla.  So many of those flavored yogurts use artificial flavors that won’t do much for this dish. Also, the added vanilla covers up a little of the extra tangy flavor that plain yogurt has.  Then cut up the cooked pears into bite sized pieces, and mix in the pears and sauce.  Chill and enjoy for breakfast or even for dessert. (This tastes almost as rich as pudding!)