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Pear upside down cake

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Course: Dessert
Ingredients Equipment Method Notes

Ingredients
  

  • 5 ripe pears peeled cored, cut into 2cm-thick wedges for fresh pears, a little thinner for poached pears.
  • 100 ml pear poaching liquid if available concentrated by 50% and 130g brown sugar, otherwise increase the brown sugar a little.
  • 270 g unsalted butter softened
  • 300 g caster sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 2/3 cups (250g) plain flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp nutmeg
  • 80 g almond meal
  • 1 cup 250ml milk
  • Thick cream to serve

Equipment

  • Your will need a greased and lined 25cm spring form tin and your electric mixer for this recipe.

Method
 

  1. Preheat oven to 180°C (not fan-forced).
  2. Sprinkle brown sugar and concentrated syrup over the base.
  3. Melt 100g of the butter and pour over brown sugar syrup mix. In a neat pattern top with overlapping pear slices.
  4. Place remaining butter and caster sugar in bowl of electric mixer beat on medium speed until light and fluffy. It should take about 5-6 minutes.
  5. Add eggs one at a time while beating. Turn the mixer off occasionally and scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula.
  6. On a low speed fold in the dry ingredients.
  7. Mix in the milk to form a smooth batter.
  8. Pour all of the batter over the prepared pears.
  9. Place pan on a baking tray, to catch any possible leaks and place in the oven.
  10. Bake for 45 minutes and drop the temperature to 150c.Cover if necessary to prevent overbrowning. Continue baking for another 30 minutes.
  11. When ready take the cake out and cool for 20-30 minutes.
  12. Carefully invert the cake on to a suitable sized serving plate.
  13. Serve with thickened cream for afternoon tea or warm with vanilla ice cream as a dessert.

Notes

This recipe is suitable with drained poached pears or because of the extended cooking time you can use fresh pears as long as they are ripe.