Breton Pear Cake

Uh oh, I'm using pears again! What is it with me and pears, you wonder? I like them more than apples. There, I said it. Apples can take a long hike off a short pier. Not really. Apples are good too. Most fruit is fairly delish. Except raisins. Don't even try to be giving me raisins.

Moving on. With all of these pears coming out of my ears again, I had to find a new recipe. And this one popped up on Baking Bites for Breton Apple Cake. So of course I swapped the apples for pears - and voila!

This recipe also asks for a springform pan, and while I'm sure that creates a prettier cake, it doesn't make it any more delicious. As I don't currently own a springform pan, my regular square one stepped up to the plate. I am also lazy and did not feel like sprinkling with powdered sugar. Sue me, I had only just cleaned the dang sifter thingy, I didn't want to have to clean it again!

Breton Pear Cake

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
3 large eggs, separated
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup plain yogurt (whole or low fat/greek-style ok)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
 1 large pear (or 2 smaller ones), peeled and thinly sliced


Preheat oven to 350F and lightly grease a 9-inch springform pan (or you can just use a square pan like me).

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolks, followed by the vanilla extract and the yogurt. Sift in flour, baking powder and salt and mix just until all ingredients are well combined and no streaks of flour remain. Batter will be quite thick.
In a medium bowl, beat egg whites to stiff peaks. Stir about half of the egg whites into the cake batter (you can use an electric mixer on “low” to stir) to lighten the batter, then gently mix in the remaining egg whites. Fold in pear slices.

Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake for 45-50 minutes, until cake is golden brown and a toothpick inserted near the center comes out with only moist crumbs attached.

Cool for at least 40 minutes before serving.

Cake can be eaten warm or at room temperature.

In photos:

The butter and sugar.

Add some egg yolks and it starts to get very yellow.

And then kinda watery with the addition of the vanilla and yogurt. I only had vanilla flavored yogurt, rather than plain, and I think it actually made this taste even better. And looking back, I may actually have used 1/2 cup rather than 1/4. Whoops! Oh well, it turned out fine.

Adding in the other dry ingredients, it looks like most dough does.

Time to beat up some egg whites. I actually made sure to beat these long enough this time. But you know what, I am rather lazy when it comes to this stuff. Because having to dirty multiple mixers is just annoying.

The egg whites mixed in. Doing it by hand at this point.

And the pear bits. I would've like a little more pear, but probably only half of another one, because the ones I have are quite large. And as I didn't want to eat another pear when I'd be eating this pear cake later... well. Less pear in the cake. I told you I was lazy.

Batter in the lightly greased pan!

45 minutes later...

It's quite delicious, I must say. Very moist. It does start to lose some of its moistness after a couple of days, though, so it's not something to keep lying around too long. It's also very filling, so though you may want to eat it all up in a jiffy, your stomach will say nooo.