Cake with pears in syrup

While staying at my mum's I was leafing through The Silver Spoon cookbook (Il cucchiaio d'argento). Since we had guests coming to dinner I decided to make the Corona alle Pere for dessert. Another opportunity to sample the great St-Rémy pears from my mother's garden, a special variety that needs to be stewed.

Serves 6-8

4-6 pears, depending on the size (I used 4 huge pears)

juice of 1 lemon

250 g sugar

500 ml red wine

50 g butter

3 eggs

3 tbsp milk

120 g flour

pinch of baking powder

Peel the pears, remove the core and cut them in 4-8. Put them in a bowl with the lemon juice to prevent discoloration.

Move them to a saucepan, add 100 g sugar and the wine. The pears should just be covered in wine.

Bring to the boil over a low heat and simmer gently until the pears are cooked. Cooking time depends on the variety of pear used.

Leave the pears to cool in their syrup.

Preheat the oven to 180 °C.

Grease a cake tin with butter and dust it with flour.

Beat the egg yolks with 150 g sugar until pale and creamy.

Mix baking powder with flour and stir it in.

Melt butter and add milk and stir this in.

Wisk egg whites and fold them in.

Pour the mixture in the cake tin and bake for about 30 min.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely.

Meanwhile remove the pears from the syrup.

Put the cake in a serving dish.

Reheat the syrup, then sprinkle some of it on to the cake, a little at a time, to allow absorption.

Pour the reminder of the syrup over the pears again.

Serve the cake with the pears.

Note: The original recipe tells you to bake the cake as a crown and place the pears in the middle of it. The pears are cored and left whole. A lot more wine is used. Baking powder is only added completely at the end when making the cake.

Note: Another great recipe using stewed pears was blogged by Leafy Cooking.