Chocolate and Pear Cake
  • Prep Time: 30 minutes
  • Cook Time: 60 minutes
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Chocolate and Pear Cake

By March 27, 2016

A tasty Gluten free chocolate and pear cake. Great for Easter.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Poach the pears. See the instructions below.
  2. Grease a standard size loaf tin with a little butter and lightly dust with a little flour. Cut a strip of greaseproof paper and line it in a strip in the bottom of the tin. This will make it easier to remove the cake later.
  3. Make the cake. Start by creaming together the butter and sugars.
  4. Sieve in the flour, cocoa and baking powder. Add the ground almonds, milk and eggs and mix together.
  5. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees fan.
  6. When the pears are ready remove them from the sugar syrup and leave them to drain in a sieve.
  7. Line the bottom of the loaf tin with 1 cm of the cake mixture.
  8. Place the pears, equally spaced into the middle of the loaf tin.
  9. Cut the chocolate into chips and stir into the remaining cake mixture. Place the cake mixture evenly around the pears.
  10. Cook for 50 to 60 minutes. Check the cake is ready by seeing whether the top springs back to the touch and a skewer comes out clean.
  11. Leave to cool in the tin on a wire rack until it is completely cold (I didn't do this and one end cracked away from the pear). Loosen slightly around the sides if it has stuck.  Tip gently out on to a plate, top side first and then use another plate to flip it over to the right side.
  12. Great served on its own or for extra indulgence with some cream. Will keep for a few days in an airtight tin.
Allergens

Allergens

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This tasty Chocolate and Pear Cake was inspired by a picture in my friend Agnes’ French Cookery magazine. I have made the cake Gluten free by making a cake dough from ground almonds and cornflour. I made this cake for Easter so to make extra special I have added some white chocolate and dark chocolate chips.

You will need 3 pears the same size that will fit in a standard size loaf tin, with some space to spare. I used small William pears but conference pears would also work well.You need to use unripe hard pears, ripe ones will go to mushy.  The pears are cooked in a sugar syrup. Peel the pears leaving the stalks in place. Flatten the bottom of the pears so that they are able to stand up on their own. Place the pears in a sauce pan and cover with water. Measure the amount of water that is needed to completely cover the pears, add 40 g of white sugar for each 250ml of water you had to use, I needed 1.25 litres of water therefore 200g of sugar. Bring the mixture to a gently simmer and cook for 20 to 25 minutes until they gone a little bit soft, don’t let them go too soft as they are going to be cooked further.

The cake tastes really good. I was a bit impatient and turned it out of the tin before it was fully cold and one end split. Be patient and it should be fine or it you want warm cake just go for it. Hope you like it too.

 

 

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