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.

Pear Spice Cake with Pecan Praline Topping

Pears pears pears! I made a pear crisp only a couple weeks ago, and here I'm at it again with a pear spice cake! That's what happens when you buy a Costco-sized bag of gigantor pears and you are but one little person. Next time I should try roasting them, right? But I've used them all up for now, so this will have to sate the other pear lovers out there.

I found this recipe over at Joy the Baker, only she used walnuts instead of pecans. She also included chopped walnuts in the cake itself, which is just something I don't approve of generally speaking. That's like brownies with nuts. Gross. I'm sure a lot of you out there loooove walnuts, but you know what? Blegh. Walnuts are right up there with onions and pineapple and coconut for me. Hmm. Maybe I've said too much. You've lost all respect for my palate, haven't you?

Oh well! More for me, then! But in all seriousness, this cake is super moist and delicious, and if you don't make some kind of brown sugar amazingness topping, you will be seriously missing out.


Pear Spice Cake
Adapted from Joy the Baker

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground allspice
• 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs, separated
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1  cups buttermilk
• 3 pears, peeled, cored and diced into roughly 1/2-inch pieces (about 1 to 1 1/4 cups of fruit)

Make cake:

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour bundt pan.

Sift together flour,  baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. Beat together butter, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg in another bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until fluffy, about 3 minutes in a standing mixer or 4 with a handheld. Add yolks 1 at a time, beating well after each addition, then beat in vanilla. Reduce speed to low, then add flour mixture and buttermilk alternately in batches, mixing well after each addition.  Fold in pear pieces.

Beat egg whites in another bowl with cleaned beaters until they just hold stiff peaks, then fold whites into batter gently but thoroughly.

Spoon batter into pan, smoothing top, and bake until a wooden pick or skewer comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes. Cool cake in pan on a rack 10 minutes, then invert onto rack and cool completely.

Pecan Praline Topping

• 3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 cup whipping cream
• 1 cups pecans, roughly chopped, toasted

Stir golden brown sugar, whipping cream and  1/2 cup butter in heavy medium saucepan over medium-high heat until smooth. Boil 3 minutes, stirring often. Stir in pecan pieces. Spoon warm topping over warm cake. Serve warm or at room temperature.

In pictures:

Sugar and spice and everything nice. Incidentally, I didn't have any all spice, and the cake still tasted great, but I think the all spice would've given it that extra oomph, so I recommend you use it if you have it.

Flour mixture added in. Look at how fluffy it's getting!

With the pears and egg whites mixed in. I didn't beat my egg whites as long as I should've, but I was doing it by hand and I was impatient.

It's ready to go into the oven!

Out of the oven!

 I forgot to take photos of the process of making the topping. Whoops. My topping is runny. I should've let it sit out a little bit and it would've thickened up.

Mmmm.

Delicious!

Pear Crisp

What's this? It's Valentine's Day? I should be showing you something chocolate-y? Pish posh. Fruit! Fruit is where it's at! Let's face it, not everyone in the world is in love with chocolate. I know, they're certainly crazy, but what can you do?

I'll tell you what you can do - you can make this pear crisp for them instead! Or you can substitute apples instead of pears, if you want. I just feel like pears are often left in apples' dust.

And I may or may not have had a Costco size bag of pears to contend with. Shh. Don't tell the pears.

Pear Crisp

Adapted from a recipe from The Pioneer Woman. She used chopped up pecans in her topping, but I didn't feel like chopping up pecans, so I substituted oats instead.

Ingredients

Filling Ingredients:

• 3 whole (to 4) Large Pears
• 2/3 cup Sugar
• 1/4 teaspoons Salt 

 Topping Ingredients

• 1-½ cup All-purpose Flour
• 1/3 cup Sugar
• 1/3 cup Firmly Packed Brown Sugar
• 1/2 teaspoons Cinnamon
• 3/4 cup Oats
• 1 stick Butter, Melted

Preparation Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Peel, core, and dice pears. Place into a bowl and stir together with 2/3 cup sugar and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Set aside.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, and oats . Stir together. Drizzle melted butter gradually, stirring with a fork as you go until all combined.
Pour pears into a baking dish; top with crumb topping.
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
Place pan on top rack of oven for an additional 10 minutes, or until topping is golden brown.
Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

In photos:

Can I tell you something? I had SUCH a time peeling my pears. It was seriously a work out. I don't know if I was just doing it wrong or what. Also, I ended up only needing three pears because they were huge. If you have smaller ones, you may need four.

The dry ingredients for the topping (aka the best part of a crisp).

And with the butter mixed in. You could probably put in a few more oats than I did.

Layer of pears. I used an 8x8 pan, because otherwise I only had a 9x13... somewhere in between probably would've been best for these.

Topping piled on. It's pretty thick in this size of pan.

And, out of the oven.

Scooped out. Yummy.

But it's really not complete without some vanilla bean ice cream melting all over!