​The pears in my fruit orchard ripen in early fall. But nationwide, pears are considered a winter fruit as they are widely available and inexpensive in January, February, and March. 

​My no-bake pear cheesecake combines the winter fruit with a hint of fall spices and because it is low-fat it won’t ruin your new years resolution to lose the holiday weight.

​The crust is simple and laced with flavor. Add fall spice to the crust by pulsing vanilla wafers with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and nutmeg in a food processor.

​My book club just finished reading The Nazi Officer’s Wife. A true account of how a Jewish woman, Edith Beer, survived the terrible events of the Holocaust and World War II. In the book she mentions eating strudel, so I thought that would be a great treat to serve for book club.

I’ve never made strudel so I started searching the web for recipes, specifically apple strudel, because it is fall and my backyard tree is full of apples. I found a variety of apple strudel recipes, some had raisins, some didn’t.  Some added nuts to the apple mixture and some layered ground nuts in the dough. The one’s that “appeared” more authentic used toasted bread crumbs somewhere. What was used for pastry was as different as each baker themselves – some made homemade pastry so thin you could see through it, some used canned crescent dough, and other’s frozen phyllo dough. I even consulted our culinary arts faculty member at work (I work at a university) and he showed me a recipe from his pastry course. My version is compilation of all those recipes I found. Despite being my first try it was delicious and was surprisingly easy to make.