French Pear Cake

Nov 21, 2024

French pear cake really celebrates the pear. There are no spices or frostings overpowering the pear’s delicate flavour. It’s just a simple cake batter, filled with juicy pear pieces. I really love a rustic cake like this, it’s not just easy to make, there’s also something so warm and homely about it.

The first time I made this cake, I made a cake batter with just butter as the fat element. The flavour was good, but I found that any leftover cake dried out a bit and the crumb was a bit too dense for my liking. So now I add a little bit of oil alongside the butter and it keeps it lovely and soft, and moist even on the following days.

Ingredients

3 large pears - They should be ripe but still reasonably firm.
1/2 Tablespoon lemon juice
150 g (3/4 cup) granulated sugar
85 g (6 Tbsp) butter melted
15 g ( 1 Tbsp) olive oil or vegetable oil
2 large eggs at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste or extract
190 g (1 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
120 g (1/2 cup) milk room temperature

Topping

2 Tablespoons granulated sugar

Serving

Powdered sugar for dusting

*The cup measurements are US size cups. Note that these are smaller than metric. For best results I recommend using grams. :)

Method

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C.) Grease and line an 8 inch round cake pan.

Peel and core the pears and then slice them into ¼-inch (6mm) slices. Add them to a medium bowl. Toss them with ½ tablespoon of lemon juice.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl and set aside.

Whisk melted butter, oil, sugar, vanilla, and eggs in a large bowl until combined.

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and the milk until combined. There may be a few small lumps, but that's okay.

Pour half the cake mixture into the prepared pan.

Arrange half of the pears over the batter, snuggly fitting and overlapping them on. Spoon over the remaining cake batter and top with the remaining pear slices.

Sprinkle the top of the batter with the extra sugar.

Bake the cake for 45-55 minutes until golden brown and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Let the cake cool for 10 minutes before removing from the pan. Use a knife to loosen the edges, flip the cake onto a wire rack, remove the paper, then flip it onto another rack to finish cooling to room temperature.

Transfer to a serving plate and dust with powdered sugar before serving.