I feel pretty strongly that when you get invited to a potluck, you’re supposed to bring a completed dish, not a bunch of raw ingredients that are going to take over the host’s kitchen and generate dirty dishes.
This recipe comes from an exception to that rule, when we were overwhelmed with pears and I needed to make a large pear cobbler for a potluck. We were camping without a stove or oven, and the party house was a rental with an unfamiliar kitchen.
So I started with my favorite Apple Crunch recipe, but simplified it so that all I had to carry was the pears, the pan, and two zip-lock bags, one with the pre-made topping and one with the brown sugar. With a cutting mat I’d tucked into my bag and the Leatherman knife from my husband’s belt, I was able to finish the assembly and pop it into the oven in about 5 minutes.
2 eggs
2 C flour
2 C sugar
1 t salt
2 t baking powder
1 t cinnamon
1/4 C butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
Combine first 6 ingredients until crumbly. Cut in the butter.
6 Bartlett-type pears, cored and sliced (no need to peel)
1/2 C brown sugar
Put the pear slices in the bottom of an ungreased 9×12 baking dish and sprinkle with the brown sugar. Crumble the topping mixture over the pears so that they are evenly covered. Bake at 350 F for an hour, until the topping is browned.