Pear Ginger Cake
Right now, I’ve got one of these babies in my freezer and the other lingering in my memory. It was inspired by a few soft pears and a huge piece of ginger Francesco had bought with the idea of making ginger tea. The only thing was it took him two weeks to get around to making the tea (which was, once he got around to making it, addictive). I’d been threatening to use it for awhile, until once night when I had a few hours to throw together a dinner and dessert for a few guests, I chopped off a hunk of ginger and went to town.
Baking the batter in two separate pans is just a symptom of my squirreling (aka freezing) problem, which will probably be cured pretty soon (T – exactly 1 month!) when I don’t have enough time/mental energy/hand-eye coordination to bake. You understand. I served one cake and froze the other because I MUST BE PREPARED FOR ANYTHING. And because no matter how much shit is hitting the fan (or my face), a cake this good will certainly make all the difference.
PEAR GINGER CAKE
This delicious, warm, inviting cake has been adapted from one from Gourmet I saw at the beautiful Caviar and Codfish. I didn’t have molasses or allspice, and went relatively easy on the ginger. So rather than “dark gingerbread pear cake” it ended up as a slightly spicy pear cake. A real keeper, if you ask me.
3 pears, cut into generous chunks
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup water
1 3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup or 110 grams) butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses or honey
3 eggs
1 -2 inches fresh peeled ginger, grated
In a small pot, cook the pear chunks, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and water. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350F/180C, and grease a 9″ cake pan (or two smaller pans).
In a medium bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ground ginger, and salt.
Melt the butter with the extra water from pears. In a large bowl, mix the molasses (or honey), brown sugar, eggs, fresh ginger and the butter/pear water mixture. Gently mix in the flour mixture and the pears. Pour everything into the prepared pans and bake for 40 minutes in the preheated oven or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
