Chai-spiced Pear Cake

Emelia Jackson in her latest book, "First, cream the butter and the sugar" has developed this glorious chai tea flavoured cake, it's a Chai spiced Pear Cake. It's absolutely delicious with a very tender crumb, and was a pleasure to make this week. I'm delighted to be able to share the cake making process with you, at last. Thanks Emelia.

Pears Baked as in Savoy or French Savoie

 

This is a stunning fruit dessert, inspired by the Savoy region in France. It consists of the simplest ingredients and is delicious despite containing no wine, but it will pair beautifully with your best bottle of dessert wine or sticky. It really is an exercise in simplicity, with pears, butter, cream, sugar, a vanilla bean, and that's all. The pears cook to perfection, surrounded by the most delicious sauce. This is a French recipe so there's no shortage of beautiful butter. Thanks Stephanie Alexander for the inspiration to take the humble pear to the next level for dessert. It's interesting that Stephanie in her acclaimed cookbook, "Cook's Companion" doesn't provide any illustrations for most of her recipes but she doesn't need to, her reputation speaks for itself. There are photos on her website though.

Pear, Walnut and Chocolate Cake

It's St. Valentine's Day today and the Mahjong girls came over to our house this afternoon for the weekly round of games, so chocolate had to be in the ingredients for the cake I chose to bake. I also had some beautiful Corella pears which had been in my refrigerator crisper for over a week, which is normally unheard of, so it had to primarily be a Pear cake. 

Pear and Ginger Tarte Tatin to celebrate French Bastille Day

 

It's French Bastille Day, and how better to celebrate than with a delicious and very simple to make Pear Tarte Tatin. Apparently the French don't say "Happy Bastille Day" they say Happy National Holiday, "Joyeux quatorze juillet!"The holiday marks the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789,  in Paris. The Bastille was originally built as a medieval fortress but then became a state prison. Our son and his family are living in Provence for now, and are travelling around in their camper on holidays, so it will be interesting to talk to them about their experiences on their National Day. When I saw this Tarte Tartin recipe on the lovely Lorraine's blog, @Not Quite Nigella, I had to make it. In fact I made three of them when I was in Cairns, just to perfect it of course. Mr. HRK is quite the fan of a Tarte Tatin. Pears are so plentiful, so it is the perfect  economical dessert to cook right now.

Mr. HRK and I had just arrived  in Marseille in 2009, which seems so long ago, and were amazed on arrival that nothing, and I mean nothing, seemed to be open on a working day during the week. We then saw barricades being erected and police arriving, and we realised that there was going to be a street parade. We were really hungry, and the only place we could find open to dine in was a McDonalds. So unashamedly as tired tourists, we stumbled in there, and discovered with my limited French, that it was Bastille Day. However we were very disappointed that we hadn't found a charming little French cafe to dine in. That came the following day. We had been staying with a French family prior to travelling to Marseille, and they hadn't mentioned to us that it was Bastille Day on the 14th July, and what to expect. Oh well, it made us wonder how significant the National day actually is to the French people. I'm sure it is though.

Ginger and vanilla are flavours that marry with pears very well, although  just use vanilla if you wish in this recipe. Golden Syrup is the secret ingredient here, making this recipe very simple to make instead of needing to make a caramel. Lorraine suggests that you could also use rosemary, cinnamon, almonds, citrus and chocolate, for extra flavour enhancement, or a splash of your favourite liqueur, such as Grand Marnier, Kirsch, brandy or a dessert wine (yum). It is really a blank canvas to work with with so many options to choose from.

Let's Cook:

Ingredients:

Serves 6, make that 4 in our house

1/3 cup/100g/3.5 ozs golden syrup

2 thin slices fresh ginger, peeled and finely sliced into matchsticks, or small blobs of bottled ginger if you wish

1 vanilla bean, split in half (I used 1 teaspoon Vanilla bean paste)

550 g/1.2 lbs Pears, or enough to fit the base of your springform tin

2 tablespoons butter, cold and cubed

1 1/4 sheets butter puff pastry, thawed in the frig (essential to use butter puff pastry)

Method:

Spray the base and sides of a 23cm/8 inch springform pan with oil spray and line the base with baking paper. A 20 cm pan will be fine as well. 

Just in case, place your springform pan in another tray with a lip on it to catch any drips. This shouldn't happen with a newish pan.

Preheat your oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.5.

Gently warm your golden syrup (about 10 seconds in the microwave) and pour onto the lined base of your tin and spread to the edges with a pastry brush. Then sprinkle the ginger around the base and add the seeds from the vanilla bean halves on top. I just spread small blobs of the vanilla bean paste over the ginger. 

In this photo below, I had used bottled ginger because I was in a hurry, and just placed small spoonsful of it over the golden syrup, and it still tasted delicious. Sometimes we just need to improvise with what we've got on hand and what is available.

Preparing the pears:

The pears need to be peeled, sliced in half from top to bottom, and the cores removed. I found this really simple to do with a teaspoon or with the knife I peeled them with. 

Place the pears in the tin, domed side down. Scatter the cubed butter over the top.

Place the whole sheet of puff pastry over the pears, and tuck in the sides, creating a nice raised ridge. Oops, the large sheet should have gone in first. I corrected this and placed the whole sheet in and then the 1/4 sheet on the top. I wonder if it would really have made that much difference to the result.

 Then place the 1/4 sheet in the centre so that there is some more puff pastry when the tart is cooked, that's always good, don't you think, the more puff the better? Just add more pastry if you think it is needed. It won't be noticeable when the tart is turned out later.

If the pastry is still cold, your tart can be cooked straight away. Otherwise, pop it back into the frig to chill for 20 minutes. The pastry will cook so much better and puff up beautifully.

Bake for 35 minutes, or until the pastry is golden and puffed. Take it out of the oven, give a little cheer, and leave it to cool for 3-4 minutes.

Now for the slightly tricky part.

Place a serving tray over the top of the springform tin, and I suggest a light serving tray,  and quickly turn upside down, scraping onto the tray any caramel sauce that is left in the tin.

Remove the tin and decorate as you wish. I used mint leaves as I had them and I liked the colour contrast and the freshness and the slightly minty flavour they brought to the dish, however if you use the scraped vanilla beans, they look fantastic, laid over the top of the pie.

Serve with ice cream, preferably ginger or vanilla.

I've also made an Apple Tarte Tatin and a Plum Tarte Tatin over the years. Always delicious.

Bon appetit,

Pauline

Pear, Pistachio, and Rose Cake

This is Nigella Lawson's recipe which lives up to every expectation of what a cake should be. The flavours are perfectly balanced, fresh, and with just a hint of rosewater. The topping of apricot jam, lemon juice and rosewater is delicious. I haven't made a cake apart from those in my normal repertoire for a little while, so it was nice to try something new. I'm never sure how successful a cake with just ground almonds and no flour ingredients will be, but the additional ground pistachios provide the perfect consistency. This cake is a cinch to make, the only challenge is to choose pears which are at the edible stage but not too ripe. I used day old pears from the supermarket and they were perfect, and they don't need to be peeled. How sensible is that. With the start of Spring surprising us very soon, this seemed the perfect cake to make.

I thought I would add some edible rose petals to decorate the cake, and on my morning walks with our dog Locky, I walk past a lovely rose garden in the front yard of a duplex property. I often stop to smell the roses. They are always in flower. I took the plunge one morning, knocked on the occupant's front door and asked her if I could buy one of her roses to decorate a cake She wouldn't hear of my buying it from her and said when I was walking past on the day I was decorating the cake to just take one of the roses. So I did, but I took one which had been in bloom for while. I still felt a little guilty about it but the rose was about to be put to very good use. However I have learned from this, that rose petals need to be a bit smaller to look good on a cake. Anyway I had fun with it, and the Mahjong Ladies loved the idea, and the cake. It is nice to decorate a special cake with nuts and edible flower petals for a special occasion, don't you think? This is the pink rose bush in the front that the petals came from. One day I will take the plunge and plant some roses, even though growing them in the tropics requires careful selection and care.

INGREDIENTS

Makes 8-12 slices

FOR THE CAKE

• vegetable oil (for greasing) 
• 200 grams caster sugar
• 100g/ 3/4 cup pistachios
• 450 grams (approx. 3) pears - not too ripe (cored and cut into chunks, skin still on)
• 200 grams ground almonds
• 1 1//2 teaspoons baking powder (gluten free if required)
• 6 large eggs (at room temperature)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons rosewater

FOR THE TOPPING

• 2 teaspoons apricot jam
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon rosewater

TO DECORATE

• chopped pistachios
• edible rose petals

LET'S COOK:

Use a 1 x 20 cm / 9 inch springform cake tin

1.  Preheat the oven to 180 deg. C/160 deg. C Fan/350 deg. F. Grease the sides and line the base of your springform cake tin with baking paper.
2. Put the sugar and 100g/ 3/4 cup of pistachios into a food processor and blitz until the pistachios are finely ground, with a few nubbly bits, too.
3. Add the remaining cake ingredients and blitz until everything is smoothly combined and the pears have been pureed into the batter. Remove the blade, scrape down the mixture and use the spatula to help ease every bit of batter into the prepared tin.
4. Bake for 40-50 minutes, though take a look at 35 and if the cake looks like it's browning too fast, loosely cover with foil. When the cake is ready, it will be brown on top, beginning to come away at the edges and a cake tester will come out with just a few damp crumbs sticking to it.
5. Sit the cake on a wire rack and leave to cool completely in the tin; like all flourless cakes, it will sink a little (not too much though). When the cake is completely cold, unclip, remove the base and transfer to a cake stand or plate.
6. Mix the jam, lemon juice and rosewater together in a cup, then brush this glaze over the surface of the cake, removing any small blobs of apricot if there are any. I didn't really worry about this too much though. Scatter with finely chopped pistachios and strew with rose petals, then sprinkle a few more pistachio crumbs on top.

I think it's time for cake. 

 Best wishes

Pauline

French Pear Cake

Pears are in season and lend themselves to so many wonderful cake and dessert varieties. Thank you to the AWW for the original version of this recipe. It is perfect for afternoon tea served just on its own, or serve with fresh thickened cream or ice cream for dessert. Serves 10.
Cooking time: 1 hour 25 minutes

Ingredients:

40g unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup (60g) ground almonds or ground hazelnuts
3 eggs
1 3/4 cups (385g) Castor sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup (125ml) milk
2 cups (300g) self-raising flour, sifted
4 (800g) slightly under ripe pears, cored, sliced thickly
2 tablespoons coffee sugar crystals or demarara sugar
20g unsalted butter,  chopped, extra required

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg. C (160 deg.C fan-forced). Generously grease a 23cm spring form cake pan with the softened butter.Sprinkle in half of the ground almonds, shake them around the pan so they coat the sides and base. Place pan on a baking paper or alfoil lined oven tray.
2. Combine the eggs  and sugar in a food processor; process until combined. Add the vanilla, milk and flour, and process until it forms a thick smooth batter.
3. Transfer the cake mixture to a large mixing bowl; stir in the sliced pears; pour the mixture into prepared pan. Sprinkle top with remaining ground almonds and sugar crystals. Dot with the extra butter.

1. Bake cake for 1 hour 15 minutes or until golden brown and cooked when tested.Cover with foil if it starts to over-brown during baking. Cool in pan for 10 minutes.

Serve the cake warm with double cream or ice cream.

Best wishes

Pauline

Pear and cranberry spice cake

Click here for recipe:

This pear and cranberry spice cake could proudly grace the counter of any well known coffee and cake establishment around the country, it is that good. Lou managed to arrange the pear slices perfectly, and topped with the apricot jam glaze it looked beautifully glossy, professional and inviting.

It wasn't a cinch to assemble though. There are a few stages to making this cake, befitting it worthy as an elegant accompaniment to any celebration or special event. Lou also chose to bake this cake to celebrate her parent's 70th wedding anniversary, and even though they are in Perth, they were thrilled. I think that is a lovely story.

This cake was originally created by Chef Lorraine Godsmark, at Sydney's Yellow Bistro and Food Store and published in Wine Selector Magazine, Autumn 08.A timeless recipe.

Poached Pears in Red Wine Sauce

Cherry blossom, Rotorua, N.Z.

This Poached Pears in Red Wine recipe is simple but sophisticated and because it is based on fruit and red wine, must be healthier as a dessert.
Serves 4. Prep and cook time: 40 minutes
Ingredients:
1 cup (220g) sugar
1 cup (250ml) red wine
1 cup (250ml) water
1 cinnamon stick
1 strip lemon rind
4 just ripe pears, with stems attached

Let's cook:

1. Place sugar, wine, water, cinnamon and lemon rind into a medium saucepan. Stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves and mixture comes to boil. Reduce heat; simmer for 5 minutes or until slightly reduced.
2. Meanwhile, peel pears and, using a small sharp knife, remove cores from underside of pears.
3. Lower pears into poaching liquid and simmer, uncovered, for 20-30 minutes or until tender, turning pears occasionally during cooking so they colour evenly.
4. Transfer pears to a heated plate and cover to keep warm. Boil the remaining liquid for about 10 minutes or until it becomes syrupy. Serve pears with syrupy red wine sauce and ice-cream or double cream, if desired.

Do you prefer your pears peeled or unpeeled for this recipe? I don't mind them unpeeled either but perhaps the wine doesn't soak into the fruit as well.