• 2 golden delicious apples and 2 Kaiser pears
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons corn starch
• 1 egg + 2 yolks
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Cloves
• Sweet white wine
• 1 1/4 cups milk
• Cinnamon, both sticks and powdered
• A few leaf-shaped chocolates, for decorating the finished dish

Peel and core the fruit using a corer, cut the fruit in half, and set it in a pot, covering it with equal parts water and wine. Sprinkle 5-10 cloves into the pot (this depends upon your preference) and 3 tablespoons of sugar; bring everything to a boil, then lower the flame and simmer for about 15 minutes. Drain the fruit with care -- you don't want to damage the pieces.

In a bowl, beat the corn starch, yolks, and egg. Next, heat the milk, butter, vanilla, an inch of cinnamon stick, and sugar in a pot, stirring gently until it comes to a boil. Remove the pot from the flames, fish out and discard the cinnamon, and add the egg mixture in a thin stream, whipping the milk all the while. Return the pot to the fire and cook over a low flame for about 10 minutes, stirring gently all the while; the cream will be ready when it has become fairly firm. Let it cool, stirring it frequently to keep a skin from forming over the top. When it has cooled, put it into four elegant bowls.

Carefully slice the fruit, arrange it elegantly over the cream, decorate the dishes with a couple of chocolate leaves each (or whatever else strikes your fancy), dust them with powdered cinnamon, and serve barely warm.

This will take about a half hour, and serve 4. It would go quite nicely with a sweet sparkling wine, for example a Moscato d'Asti (Fontanafredda, which has faint bitter notes in the finish, or Giorgio Carnevale, which is extremely lush.)

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