Pear and Cranberry Upside-Down Cake
The pear is a particularly humble fruit often forgotten in my house or outshone by the more appealing apple,the milkshake-worthy banana, the stunning golden kiwi or the refreshing watermelon. If it were a game of ball, the pear would be the last to be picked onto the team. It may be its delicate flavour, subtle sweetness and generally modest but spotty complexion that causes it to be overlooked, to fade into the background of other more colourful, juicy, sweet and tangy fruit. Nevertheless, I have a special fondness for this bottom-heavy fruit, especially the conference and packham variety; I love them on its own, in salads or poached and served with cream or custard. They’re quite the versatile fruit and cooking them releases its delicate honeyed flavour all the more.
The last upside-down cake I made (years ago, geez) was a recipe from Bill Granger and I remember using heckloads of maple syrup in it. I’d used bananas in the base and so the cake was pretty rich and intensely sweet. Mindblowingly so in fact. I believe the post-cake sugar high lasted for bout half an hour or so, which isn’t quite a good thing for sugar-maniacs like me. But this recipe – Bill Granger’s Banana Maple Upside Down Cake from Bill’s Open Kitchen – is still gorgeous if you aren’t too calorie or sugar-conscious. Instead of using this same Granger recipe, however, I wanted a recipe that wouldn’t have too many flavours working in the syrupy base so as not to overpower the pears. I found one from Ottolenghi and was really excited to give it a go since many have raved about Ottolenghi. Because I have yet to taste their gorgeous food for myself, I simply cannot wait to be in London next year to taste Ottolenghi amongst other equally, if not more, amazing restaurants like Maze, Nobu and dans le noir?. Reckon I should start organizing a list of restaurants to visit with my future flatmate (if she’s nice and amiable!). Someone pass me my diary please…Diva’s got an important restaurant visit-list to note down! Figures I’ll have to work doubly hard to earn a wage that’ll support my shopping, my desire for shoes and that insatiable hunger for yum yummy food.
I’m really pleased with this recipe. I admit it’s a lot of work since you’ve got to poach the pears, make the caramel topping from scratch and basically make sure nothing burns and that you don’t burn yourself, but the results were fantastic. The recipe uses cranberries which I thought would be quite a wonderful marriage with pears, giving it a sweetness boost and a light touch of tanginess. The cake batter incorporates lemon and orange zest amidst spices like ground star anise, cinnamon and nutmeg. The ground almonds also gave it a lovely fluffy texture. Any recipe that uses ground almonds I love. Something about ground almonds that gives all baked goods a special x-factor. So anyway, this is sort of an autumnal cake which I found delightful especially since September is finally here and we’ve gotta say goodbye to summer. I might add a little more cinnamon and nutmeg to the batter in the future as I quite like a bit more spice in cakes like these. The pears which were poached in lemon zest, lemon juice, sugar and spices tasted wonderful with the caramel topping and cranberries soaked in the pear poaching water. Together with the cake, served warm, it was lush! I loved the lemoniness and laces of orange together with the cinnamon-sweetness of the pears and cranberries. I’m not that great at describing how good food tastes to me but honestly, this was good. Moist, very tasty and not overly sweet such that you couldn’t even taste the pear.
Gorgeous.
One problem I had with the recipe, aside from all my kitchen accidents which I’ll get to in a bit, was the baking time. The recipe states that you bake it for 35 mins but I had to bake mine in the oven for nearly 50 mins. I’m not too sure why that was and I have a nagging suspicion that my oven wasn’t preheated long enough to get to the right temperature for baking the cake and thus, required a longer cooking time than advised in the recipe. Any ideas?
I chose not to glaze the cake with jam a little watered down in a saucepan as I felt the caramel topping was sufficient and the cake moist and pretty enough. Like I’d mentioned before, I wanted to keep the recipe simple so I’d stay true to the pears. Any other jam, apricot, strawberry or marmalade would just be unhelpful.
Right, so some of you might be wondering about those kitchen accidents and if you’ve kept up with me on Twitter, you’d have some idea of the silly things I’d done to myself. I guess today’s just one of those days where hand-eye coordination totally fails you. On days like that, I usually ruin everything and by the end of the day, I feel exhausted and emotionally drained. Ie., I feel like a failure. The upside down cake gave me hope but the process of making it was utterly chaotic. Whilst preparing the lemon zest, I’d grated my thumb into the zest as well. Quite a mess I created with the blood streaked across the white sink. Yes. My kitchen’s got a white, dark brown and silver theme to it. All the table tops are marble white and mum loves to keep it absolutely spotless. She’s anal. And I’m OCD-ed. Great. Picture me freaking out and washing away all the blood, picking out the bad zest and all – don’t worry. It didn’t really get onto the lemon but totally irked me out.
So what happened next? Yes, there’s more. The caramel was a successful event. As I stirred the butter into the melted sugar, the itchy-fingered bit of me suddenly stuck a finger into the beautifully browning (and still, bubbling) mixture. Yep. I burnt my finger through and through. It’s now red, sore and still throbbing. To top it off with the cherry on the icing, I’ve got a bulbous white blister on the tip of my finger that really gets in the way of typing, washing my hair, etc.
Wally brain in the kitchen. Stay away.
I’d like to stop here and end your pain. I mean, seriously, you can hurl me some verbal abuse and I wouldn’t mind. Haha. Getting my cake out of the oven was interesting as well. As I’d placed my cake tin on a cookie tray to prevent any accidental spillage, I had to get the cake out of the oven with oven mitts by grabbing the cookie tray and pulling it out. I gather my brain had executed complete shutdown or just decided a simple act like this didn’t require complex thinking – I turned 90 degrees to my left without moving my right arm away from the oven and seared the flesh of my upper right arm with the cookie tray. WOW. The skin’s kinda like welded down where I’ve burned it. A burn line of about 1.5 inches. If anyone asks, I’ll just say I was in a fight or something. My life’s way cooler than ‘Whoops. I burned myself with a cookie tray.’ Oh no. I can already imagine the looks on their faces when they find out the truth. Scarred for life I am, pun not intended.
Right. But the cake was good so I’m a happy chappy. Off to go reap the rewards of my efforts today. If you’re looking for that recipe, check it out over at Ottolenghi’s website. They’ve got loads of other cool recipes as well.
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:01 am
yum yum! looking forward to the autumn produce. lovely cake!
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:45 am
good things must share, where’s my slice?
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:47 am
Meeta: thanks meeta! i’ve taken your advice and holed up in my bedroom, lazying on the bed with a book. part of me is also dreaming about macarons. hope i find the guts to make them soon!
ladyironchef: indeed, good things are meant for sharing. take me to taste peach garden’s custard buns and i might send u a slice.
xx
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:14 am
hahaha now i know what to do with my frozen cranberries! up side down cranberries!
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:19 am
Big Boys Oven: sounds yum yum
nigella has an amazing recipe for Cranberry Upside Down too! yay for upside downs.
xx
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Pears are definitely “forgotten” when it comes to autumn produce – love how you showcased them though in the lovely cake!!
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:51 pm
A wonderful combo! That cake looks so delicious!
Cheers,
Rosa
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:39 pm
I will go upside down for this cake :p
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Great job Diva! It looks like it would be right at home in the window of a beautiful patisserie
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:23 am
I can see how that would be a lot of work to make. But wow, what a scrumptious reward in the end.
September 3rd, 2009 at 2:58 am
Gorgeous and absolutely delicious. Love this fruit combination-it’s the best reward isn’t it?? Fantastic job, Diva!
September 4th, 2009 at 5:09 am
The end result is super
September 4th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
I’m just eating some pears as I read this. And I was thinking of making a pear and ginger cake tomorrow. This is a sign!
Thanks for letting me know about the stupid messup on my blog
September 5th, 2009 at 1:08 am
Thanks everyone for the comments!
They’re very encouraging and indeed the pear cake as a reward was superb! It’s all gone – in 2 days! so it must speak for itself, i hope.
The Purple Foodie: pear and ginger is quite the combo! I love ginger and i’m imagining the taste would be fab
lemme know how it goes. no problem about your blog. i hope you managed to sort it out. Have been wanting to leave comments on it!!
xx
September 5th, 2009 at 4:38 am
I hear ya about timing being a problem with some cake recipes. I no longer trust the times given in some cookbooks anymore. Most recipes underestimate the time required in a home baker’s oven. I have a Wolf oven and it’s darned accurate. I think perhaps professional ovens may work with a convection mode (which I have as well on my Wolf) but it could be they simply didn’t test their recipes properly for a normal home oven. I know a person who works in the industry and helped write a cookbook. There are many cookbook authors who rely on “others” to write and test their recipes and often the recipes aren’t tested adequately. It bothers me. Cooks Illustrated and Rose Levy Beranbaum is good for timing. They’re accurate and I trust them. However, other cookbooks are consistently off. I found that Pichet Ong’s cookbook is inspirational and has amazing recipes…but you can’t trust the timing at all. It is so way off it’s not funny. Just trust your instincts, like you did, and it’ll work out.
September 5th, 2009 at 11:11 am
cakebrain: i’m so glad someone else feels the same way and thank you for the advice! i shall go with gut instinct from now on. i did think 35mins for a cake in a 20cm round cake tin was a little odd. I checked it at 35mins and the cake was still fairly liquid in the middle and to be honest, even at 50mins, it was fairly moist (just past being undercooked) in the middle. I would try again and see if it happens again but cheers on the advice!! Some cookbooks tend to be a little off with their timings, totally agree. which is annoying for us.
xx
September 5th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
what a beautiful cake, it has been ages since I had an upside down cake. Of course, it was the traditional pineapple version. I love the idea of pears and I agree they are so under appreciated.
September 5th, 2009 at 11:35 pm
WOW GREAT SITE, Such an appealing cake, my stomach is truly rumbling in hunger after scrolling through your blog. Will definitely be stopping by the sugar bar more often.
Cheers
September 6th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
That looks wonderful – I love the place on an upside down cake where the fruit and cake meet, all moist and dark and rich. Your photos make me want to reach right my computer! I have a similar recipe I plan to get to once the local pears are ready to use. Thanks for stopping by my blog – nice to meet you!
September 6th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
A great-looking and marvellous cake! Simply irresistable!
September 8th, 2009 at 2:42 pm
oh your mishaps in the kitchen sound like mine!
i fear that i fall in the category of people who overlook pears. don’t get me wrong, i have a few very ripe pears in my possession right now, and i enjoy a few slices after work with proscuitto and gorgonzola. however, it never occurs to me to bake with this fruit. apples and bananas, yes. not so much pears. i enjoy my pears hard and the only reason why i’ve let them soften is because of braces. once these suckers come off, i’m back to consuming them hard.
your cake looks beautiful and reading the steps you followed, wow, LOOOOONG. how long did it take you from start to finish?
September 9th, 2009 at 3:48 am
Lan: i love pears hard too with all that crunch but sometimes when i need comfort food, i let my pears get all soft, juicy and melty.
oh i can’t wait for you to get the braces of then! goodbye braces for good!
the cake was too good anyway for me to bother much about all tht fussing about. reward reward!!
the recipe was pretty long and i honestly don’t recall how long it took me. i do tend to take my time in the kitchen, however and i did get started late morning and finish some time in the mid-afternoon, i think?
xx
September 12th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Oh! Oh! I want.
Unfortunately there is no pear and cranberry upside-down cake here in Kyoto! I don’t think I could make this in my fish grill or rice cooker, but maybe a donabe.
You inspire me to try!
xx oo
October 26th, 2009 at 9:40 am
This looks amazing!! A perfect fall treat! After I make my upside down apple cake to use up the rest of my freshly picked apples, I’m on to this!!