Cake. Always.

I find more inspiration in sweets than real meals sometimes. I guess it is easy to make things tastier if there is sugar involved, and who doesn't like cake? Well at the moment my son is not a fan of cake, but he will happily eat this one. I used to make this one BFS (before Failsafe), but used different fruit. In it's original form it had gluten and dairy, but it was one of those fundamentally good recipes that you just know will work without them. Happily, it does not just 'work', it works fantastically!

It is based on a Donna Hay recipe and is brilliant for afternoon tea or you could serve it for dessert with a little custard.

Pear Cake
Ingredients

• 125g nuttelex
• 1 cup caster sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla (I always use it, but I think it would be really good without it)
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups self raising gluten free flour, sifted (or plain flour with 3tsp baking powder).
• Tinned pear halves in syrup, drained and each cut into about 4 wedges  (depending on the size you will probably need 5 halves) You could also use very soft fresh pears.
• 1 Tbsp icing sugar

Ready to bake. Pear pieces aren't too large.

Method

1.  Preheat the oven to 160°C and line a 22cm round springform (or loose based) cake tin with baking paper.
2. Beat nuttelex, sugar and vanilla together until light.
3. Add the eggs and beat until well combined
4. Fold in the flour and scoop into the tin. You will need to spread it out a bit, it is quite a stiff mixture. Don't be fooled into thinking the tin is too big at this point, even though it doesn't take up much of the tin now, it will when it's done. I found this out the messy way.
5. Place the pears on the top however you think looks nice. Don't press them in and try not to have them too big. If they are too heavy they won't stay on the top of the cake. I also found this out the annoying way recently. It doesn't wreck the cake, but it is less pretty with the pears on the inside.
6. Bake for 1hr or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
7. Remove from the tin and dust with the icing sugar. It can be eaten warm or cold.

 Variations - Gluten - use wheat or spelt flour
                     Dairy- use butter
                     Salicylates - use nectarines, peaches or apricots. Any tolerated fruit should work as long  as it is soft.


This cake gets a really lovely crust on the outside and is quite heavy, but extremely delicious.