My husband had been mumbling about preferring pear and chocolate to the pineapple upside down cake I made last week, then my mum turned up yesterday with a few very ripe pears that needed eating. Obviously fate.
This recipe (more or less) came from the goodtoknow.co.uk website, and is definitely more a pudding than a cake. It is deliciously moist – I omitted the suggested ground almonds, as anything with ripe pears is always going to tend to be wet and I didn’t want to detract from the pear / choc taste combination. It kept OK but it really better eaten on the day it is made. The quantities below made about eight servings.
Ingredients:
2oz / 50g caster sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tssp vanilla extract
1 pint / 600ml cold water
4 pears, peeled, cored and quartered
5oz / 150g dark chocolate
2 tbsp milk
3oz / 90g butter
3oz / 90g golden granulated sugar
2 medium eggs
4oz / 120g self-raising flour
Method:
Put the sugar, lemon juice, vanilla and water into a large heavy bottomed pan and heat gently until sugar has dissolved (swirl the pan from time to time, but avoid stirring). Bring to the boil, pop the pears in and poach gently for 10-15 minutes, until beginning to turn golden. Either melt the chocolate and milk in a microwave or – much easier – put in a bowl on top of the poaching pears, taking care that the bowl doesn’t touch the water, and stir until combined and smooth then set aside tom cool slightly. Meanwhile cream the butter and sugar together, beat in the eggs one at a time with a little flour. Using a metal spoon, fold in the chocolate milk then the rest of the flour to make a light, bubbly batter mix. Arrange the pears over the bottom of a prepared / silicone cake tin then gently pour the batter over, trying to cover the pears. Bake for about 40 minutes at 190 degrees until a skewer comes out clean. Don’t worry if the top is uneven (it will eventually be the bottom!). Rest in the tin for 15 minutes.
Reduce the poaching liquid down to about 3 fl oz / 100ml syrup by boiling rapidly, swirling the LAN from time to time. Make holes across the top of the pudding and gently pour the syrup over. You may need to tip the tin around to make sure that there are no puddles. Leave for a further five minutes to soak up, then invert the pudding onto a serving plate. Best accompanied by some double cream or vanilla ice cream.
Enjoy!
apuddingaday 