expr:class='"loading" + data:blog.mobileClass'>

Saturday 1 December 2012

Pear and Cardamom Cake



With the Christmas season galloping towards us - it's good to have a few easy to make recipes up your sleeve that are still smart enough to serve as a dessert over the festive season.

This is a grown up cake with subtle flavors that linger. It just needs a scoop of good vanilla ice-cream or even better, a little quenelle of mascarpone cream. The pear in this recipe works beautifully. It moistens and subtly flavours the cake, complimenting the other flavours. The amaretti biscuits and ground almonds give a gentle note of almond while the coffee and cardamom give an initial burst of flavour before blending gently into the background.

This is an 'objet trouvé' sort of a recipe - from an advertisement promotion for DeLonghi, (hence the coffee I suppose) in Delicious Magazine.  Very pretty on the plate with it's cobweb of chocolate, and it is, indeed, delicious.



Pear and Cardamom Cake with Coffee and Amaretti

Ingredients:
175g softened butter
175g light muscavado sugar
3 medium eggs
50g ground almonds
1 tsp freshly ground cardamom
175g self raising flour
2 tbsp espresso coffee
3 ripe pears, peeled, deseeded and cut into chunks
4 amaretti biscuits, roughly crushed
75g dark chocolate

Method:
Preheat the oven to 190C
grease and line a 20cm loose-bottomed tin
Cream together the butter and the sugar until pale and fluffy
Beat in the eggs one at a time
Fold in the ground almonds, cardamom, flour, coffee, and 2/3 of the chopped pears until well combined
Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and level the surface
Scatter the remaining pears and 2/3 of the amaretti biscuits over the top and bake for 1 hour until risen and cooked. If you insert a skewer into the centre it should come out clean
Allow the cake to cool completely
Remove the cake from the tin and place onto a serving platter. Scatter over the remaining biscuits.
Melt the chocolate and drizzle over the top of the cake


13 comments:

  1. MudderaGAWD, lady, that looks Fanflamin'tastic, love it :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I really hope your cardamons weren't harvested by slave labour.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am sure that everybody would hope that, M.

      Delete
  3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You had me at espresso and amaretti. Plus it looks gorgeous too!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Kristin, you do like your coffee, almost as much as the booze ;-)

      Delete
  5. This.sounds.delicious. And I am not all that wild about chocolate...but that pear cardamom mixture sounds decadent. I'll bet it was perfect for breakfast! I wonder if we can grow Cardamom in the polytunnel? We have an Avocado tree in the so perhaps?
    Then all I need to do is find someone to harvest it for me! Any takers.....??

    ReplyDelete
  6. This cake looks gorgeous! Love the pear, cardamom, coffee and Amaretti combination. They look wonderfully delicious together.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Such a wonderful sounding cake. Pears and cardamom and amaretti biscuits I adore too. It can't be anything but scrumptious!

    ReplyDelete
  8. This looks delicious! Love pears in anything!
    Gorgeous pictures. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oh my. That looks and sounds amazing! Hungry now!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Can't wait to try this amazing recipy!

    ReplyDelete

Say hi, don't be shy!