The change of weather, and produce, has been totally refreshing. I never thought I would actually say this but I am officially over berries and anything melon until next summer. On a typical shopping high in La Vega, our Wholesale farmer’s market, I bought several kilos of shiny, green Barlett pears. After a couple days, I realized there was no way in hell I could consume all of these before spoiling so I did what any modern Cook would do—I googled a recipe for Pear Cake.
As luck would have it, I wound up on one of my favorite food blogs, Heidi Swanson’s 101 Cookbooks with a homey and way simple recipe for an Old-Fashioned Pear Cake she loved from Michael Ableman’s book, Fields of Plenty .Literally, it consisted of no more than 5-10 minutes of fruit slicing and letting the mixer do most of the work. My kind of cake. I did make a couple substitutions and additions to the original recipe for harder to find ingredients like pastry flour (in Chile at least).
The cake received rave reviews for breakfast from my husband Francisco and from Brittany in our office as an afternoon snack. It is wonderfully balanced since it is not too sweet. Personally, I dug it with a glass of afternoon tea.
½ cup (110 grams) butter at room temperature, plus 2 tablespoons melted
All-purpose flour for dusting
½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cup cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon each: ground cardamon, all Spice (or you can stick to the cinnamon)
Pinch of salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
6 firm but ripe pears, cored and cut into lengthwise quarters
Preheat oven to 350 F/180C.
Brush a 9-inch round spring form pan with the 2 tablespoons melted butter, and dust the pan with a thin, even layer of flour, tapping out the excess. Set aside. (Note: okay, I won’t lie, I was lazy and just sprayed some non-stick spray. I swear nobody will notice. Really).
Whisk together the flours, spices, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Set aside.
Using an electric mixer, beat together the 1/2 cup butter and the sugar on high speed until pale, light, and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the eggs, and beat again until well combined. Using a rubber spatula, fold in the dry ingredients just until combined. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and neatly arrange the pear quarters on top, skin side up. Bake for about 1 hour, or until the top is nicely browned and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Let the cake cool for 10 to 15 minutes before removing it from the pan.
I dusted the cake with powdered sugar before serving. Gorgeous!
