The DIY Place Card Holder: Cocoa Pear Crisps

Need a holiday hand? We've got you covered with two straight weeks of Holiday Survival Recipes -- the ones you can rely on to keep your guests (and you) feeling festive.

Today: The DIY (Edible) Place Card Holder -- Cocoa Pear Crisps

There's no need to fish for those place card holders you tossed in some dusty box in storage. Instead, we've got a DIY solution for you -- and as an added bonus, it's completely edible.

Rivka's Cocoa Pear Crisps serve as the ideal place card holders for your dinner parties. They're sure to impress your guests with your craftiness, serve as an eye-catching starter, and they're almost too simple to make. Resist the temptation to just eat them all (a tough piece of advice to follow -- we know), and instead be sure to pull these babies out of the oven before they get too crispy -- you want to make sure they can be sturdy, not crumbly, card holders. 

Simply make a few snips in the center of the crisps to wiggle in the place cards. The middle slices from coring the pears naturally work best, but that leaves the rest of the slices to snack on just in case the roast is taking a little bit longer than expected.

Cocoa Pear Crisps by Rivka

Makes about 60 crisps

3 very firm pears
3 tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoons powdered galangal, optional
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger (if not using galangal, increase this to 1 teaspoon)
3/4 teaspoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons cocoa

See the full recipe (and save it and print it) here.

Photos by James Ransom