We are used to the pairing of apples and blackberries but pears are another Autumn fruit that goes well with the acidity of the brambles. If you use blackberry jam as I did in this recipe because the pears are sweeter than the apples, the cake can do with some acidity so I added some lemon juice in the jam and lemon zest in the batter. If you use apples which are more acidic than pears, the zest is not essential although I always love the added aroma.
I love the fact that olive oil based cakes stay moist so replace wherever butter with good extra virgin olive oil.
Ingredients (serves 6-8)
- 400g ripe but firm pears, peeled, cored and chopped in bite chunks
- 100g self raising flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 eggs
- 100g caster sugar
- 75ml extra virgin olive oil
- 100ml full fat mil
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 lemon or lime, zest only
- 2 tbsp blackberry jam
- 2-3 tbsp lemon or lime juice
Method
Preheat the oven to 190 0C.
Grease a 20cm diameter loose bottom cake tin and dust with flour.
Sieve the flour and baking powder into a bowl.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar and vanilla extract till light in colour and fluffy. Add the zest if you are using. Start adding the flour, oil and milk alternatively folding the mixture with the spatula until all the ingredients have been used up and you have a loose batter. Add the chopped pears, stir to mix and empty the cake batter into the tin.
In a small bowl, loosen the jam with the lemon juice and drop it intermittently into the cake batter.
Bake in the lower half of the oven for 60 minutes, testing that a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
When you take the cake out of the oven, leave in the tin for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack for it to cool completely.
Place on a cake dish, dust with icing sugar and serve with some fresh blackberries or extra jam, even with cream if you serve as dessert.