Pear and Oat Cake

Today I was in a baking mood, and had some lovely pears needing to be eaten. Pear cake! Perfect! We love a fruit based dessert here, and I knew a freshly baked dessert would make everybody here happy.

This recipe was based on my strawberry cake recipe, with slight modifications because I wanted to use pears, and have it be more of a dessert cake than a tea cake. Plus I love sticking rolled oats in things. It's an ad hoc recipe, and has only been tested once, if you decide to try it let me know how it goes!



Pear and Oat Dessert Cake

• 100g of butter
•  half cup of brown sugar
• a quarter cup of golden syrup
• half a cup of rolled oats
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 egg
• one and a half cups of self raising flour
• about third a cup of milk - as needed
• two ripe william bartlett style pears
• an extra tablespoon of rolled oats
• raw sugar for sprinkling on top of cake before baking

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees, fan forced. Line a standard loaf tin with baking paper.

Soften the butter, mix it with the sugar. Add remaining ingredients except the milk and pear. Mix to combine, gradually start adding milk, until the consistency seems right. (Sorry about the vague instructions!)

Peel and roughly chop the pears into inch dice. Gently fold the pear through the mix, and tip into loaf tin, smooth the top and sprinkle with extra rolled oats and a sprinkle of raw sugar. Bake for about 60minutes, but keep an eye on it and check with skewer when it appears done. The skewer may not come out clean if you pierce a lump of pear! So check a couple of spots.

I intended this cake to be quite dense with fruit, quite 'desserty' so it was lovely served warm with a dollop of plain yoghurt.