Andrea, my son, has a relationship with fruit all his own. He only eats pears, apples and bananas — and even then he nibbles them, he never finishes them. I tried everything: fruit salad, nicely cut fruit, whipped cream on top. Nothing. There’s no way.
The pears left over from dinner were already going bad in the fridge. I could have thrown them away, instead I made this cake, the recipe for my grandmother’s pear cake, the one I’ve been making for years and that has never let me down.
Without butter, with lots of pears inside, soft enough. Quick batter, nothing complicated. The result is a pantry-style cake like it used to be, when leftover fruit wasn’t wasted.
The little rascal at home tasted it, finished it and even complimented me. Go figure, that impudent one.
I also have a free WhatsApp channel with one sweet and one savory recipe a day: click and subscribe → https://www.whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaHbGIn9cDDig7Cw2x0F
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Affordable
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: All seasons
Ingredients
- 1 lb 10 oz pears
- 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 4.25 oz granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1/2 packet baking powder (about 2 tsp (approx. 8 g))
- 1 lemon (use both juice and zest; organic or untreated if possible)
Tools
9-inch (22 cm) pan
- Bakeware
Steps
First of all, wash and peel the pears.
Cut them in half, remove the core and seeds, and slice them into small pieces.
Put the fruit pieces in a bowl and drizzle with the lemon juice to prevent them from browning.Put the egg and the yolk in a bowl and begin to beat them for a long time with the sugar using electric beaters.
Continue until you obtain a light and frothy mixture.Now add the flour sifted together with the baking powder, folding from the bottom up so as not to deflate the batter.
Add the milk and the pear pieces, always mixing everything carefully.Pour the resulting batter into a pan lined with parchment paper.
Bake at 338°F for about 40/45 minutes, or according to your oven’s characteristics.
Turn off the oven and let the pear cake cool.Then remove from the oven and unmold the cake and after decorating it with powdered sugar if you like, all that’s left is to bring it to the table and enjoy…
Enjoy this very simple but delicious Grandma’s pear cake!
