Pear and Raspberry Cake
Saturday, June 14, 2014
My love for cooking began when I started baking in the kitchen. I began by making simple things - chocolate chip cookies, lime and coconut loaf, cupcakes and muffins. Then I started becoming more adventurous with homemade pastry, tarts, pies, biscotti and this cheesecake.
This pear and raspberry cake is quite a simple recipe to follow and borders the line between tea cake and dessert cake so it is very versatile for whatever occasion you choose to bake for. It had been snipped it out of a newspaper ages ago and has been sitting in my cooking folder ever since.
Instead of just flour, this cake has a mixture of flour and almond meal, so it is a little bit more dense than a normal cake. The raspberries scattered throughout give it a lovely tartness and the soft, jelly-like cubes of pear add a subtle sweetness. Whenever baking I always tend to add a little less sugar than what the recipe calls for, simply because I find a lot of the time that cakes are just a tad too sweet for my liking.
The colours in this cake batter are gorgeous. The bright pink swirls of the raspberries create beautiful patterns in the mix and the fruit scattered on top completes the cake. It comes out of the oven glistening and scrumptious, with not too much of a rise. The almost fluorescent pink of the berries ooze into the cracks of the cake and blister wonderfully on top.
We're always a bit of a sucker for cakes that are hot out of the oven, so they never really get a chance to completely cool before a little chunk gets cut off and 'tested'.
I love the marbling of the colours, the contrasting textures and the sweet and sour of this cake. This is the perfect thing to eat when you feel like a warm, yummy baked treat that's not as simple as a plain pound cake or chocolate cake, but not as hard to whip up as a cheesecake or tart. It's a good in-the-middle, any-occasion-type cake. You can even add some coconut to the batter, too, for another layer of flavour. If you get the chance to try it let me know how you went in the comments below!
Pear and Raspberry Cake Recipe
Serves around 8-10
Makes one 21cm round cake
From delicious magazine, May 2012. Recipe by Valli Little.
Ingredients:
- 150g unsalted butter, softened
- 150g caster sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1/2 cup sifted plain flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 1/4 cups almond meal
- 2-3 pears, any type, peeled, cored and chopped into rough 1cm pieces
- 125g fresh or frozen thawed raspberries
- 1/4 cup flaked almonds, to top
- Icing sugar, to dust
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius, fan forced
- Grease and line a 21cm springform cake pan.
- Beat softened butter and caster sugar with electric beaters until thick and pale. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Fold in combined flour, baking powder and almond meal, then mix on low speed until just combined. Fold in most of the pear and berries.
- Tranfer batter to lined cake tin and push remaining pear and berries into the top of the batter. Sprinkle with flaked almonds.
- Bake for 50 mins or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre of the cake. Cool 5-10 mins in pan, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Dust with icing sugar, if desired, then enjoy!
3 comments
Great cake , easy to bake, moist and almond dense. I used tinned pears as no fresh ones available, all good, great comments from grateful friends
ReplyDeleteThank you, I'm so happy to hear it turned out well! Love this recipe, it's so simple and tastes and looks great! :D
DeleteI keep making this deliciously satisfying cake. The almond meal gives it a great protein meaty feel, a ideal cake when you need to fuel up on a long hike. EVERYBODY has raved about it and it is so easy to make in minutes. A great all rounder that looks so salivating good and guaranteed to please all.
ReplyDelete