I don’t know if you are a fan of the River Cottage series from the UK with cook and renaissance man Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall – I know I am. For someone with such a long-winded name he has inherently short-winded recipes with basic ingredients that are easy to follow and always turn out well – can’t ask for anything more. This beautiful pear cake is based on one of his recipes. Well, it’s supposed to be with pear, but I had some beautiful organic apples given to me so this one is with apples. It works equally as well.
Ingredients
3 pears or apples, peeled and chunked
30g butter
1tbs honey or brown sugar
Squeeze lemon juice
300g butter
225 caster sugar
4 eggs
200g almond meal
100g wholemeal self raising flour
1tsp ground cinnamon
Method
- Pre-heat oven to 170o
- Place pears, honey, butter and lemon juice in frying pan and cook until caramelized – about 10 minutes.
- In food processor cream butter and sugar together.
- Scrape down sides and add eggs one at a time until light and fluffy.
- Add almond meal, flour and cinnamon and cream together. Don’t over-beat.
- Put cake mixture in greased cake tin and spread pear mixture over the top.
- NOTE: The larger the chunks of fruit, the more they will sink into the cake which make the cake sticky and delicious.
- Bake for about 50 minutes (until skewer comes out clean). You may need to turn oven down to 150o for further 5 minutes or so. The cake should be firm to touch in the middle.
- Turn out when cool and sprinkle with icing sugar.
NOTE: You can make this cake gluten free by substituting the wholemeal flour. I usually use a mixture of buckwheat and brown rice flour.
We’ve just had a severe weather warning for storms ands floods so I think it’s time to batten down the hatches and put the kettle on. There goes another clap of thunder!
