An Oriental, Asian or nashi pear
I came across three ‘oriental pears’ in the reduced section of Asda the other day. I’ve never seen them before, but they looked interesting and for 20p I couldn’t resist! More like apples in appearance, they have a crunchy texture and a sweet taste. The pear tends to be eaten on its own, so I struggled to find any inspiring recipes on the internet. In the end I settled on a pear cake recipe from BBCGoodFood. I omitted the ‘poire William liqueur’ (I have no idea what that is) and decided to add a handful of sultanas to the mix. I also didn’t glaze the cake – with its a dark colour and rough texture I didn’t feel this was necessary.
The recipe produced a sweet but rather stodgy cake. The oriental pears gave it a very nice flavour, although I’m not overly found of the texture of pears in baking.
Ingredients
- 50g butter, melted, plus extra for the tin
- 500g nashi pears, peeled, cored and roughly chopped
- juice 1 lemon
- 75g plain flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 75g caster sugar
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 50g sultanas
- icing sugar, for dusting
Method
- Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas mark 4.
- Line a 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin with baking parchment and brush with butter.
- Put the prepared pears in a bowl with the lemon juice to prevent them discolouring.
- Sieve the flour and baking powder into a bowl, adding a pinch of salt and the caster sugar.
- Beat in the eggs and melted butter, then fold in the pears with their juices and the sultanas.
- Pour the cake mixture into the tin. Bake for about 50 mins or until a skewer comes out clean.
- Place on a wire rack and allow to cool slightly before removing from the tin, gently peeling away the parchment.
- Dust with icing sugar and serve warm.
Original recipe taken from here.
A uni chef 