Poached pears with chocolate sauce are a great combo so why not just bake poached pear inside a chocolate cake?! Oh and then pour chocolate sauce all over it of course…
Soft pear encased in soft chocolate sponge and then smothered in thick warm chocolate sauce? It’s pretty much the perfect pudding! This is ideal for after a family sunday lunch, a meal with friends, a slice with your morning coffee or just to make the most of any pears that you have on hand. Any reason you can find pretty much! Dress it up with sauce or enjoy it casually, sliced and straight into your mouth (without even bothering with a plate).
We’ve made a poached pear recipe before, these frangipane tarts with a christmassy twist, this recipe is more of a year round affair though. To start you need to poach your pears in a simple syrup flavoured with vanilla to enhance the natural sweetness in the fruit.
First peel them – we left the stalk on ours for ease of handling and also we liked the idea of having them poking out of the cake! Then let them simmer away in the syrup for about 5 mins to soften the pears and then remove from the pan so they can cool whilst you make your cake batter. The cake is an oil based mix with yoghurt in there too to give an ultra moist sponge, we tend to prefer oil based sponges on the whole and they are so well suited to loaf cakes. This recipe is a pretty straight forward combine the dry, combine the wet, combine the 2 mix. Nice and easy without too many faffy processes!
Now that your mix is made you can pop it in the tin, first pour in about 1/3 to 1/2 of the batter, then push the pears in, the pour the rest of the batter around these. This cake, like most loaf cake recipes, takes quite a while to bake, ours took about an hour. We first set a timer for 45 mins then checked on it at 5 mins intervals until we were happy it was done and a knife inserted comes out clean.
The sauce is rich and delcious and is basically a luxurious ganache made with both cream and butter. Simply heat the cream and butter until they just come to a boil and then pour over the broken up chocolate, let this sit and melt the chocolate for a couple minutes, stir it up and pour it on your slice of cake! If you have leftovers and your sauce cools and solidifys just pop it in the microwave fdor about 30 secs!
- 4 small pears, peeled & cored with stem still intact
- 50g sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 125g brown sugar
- 150g caster sugar
- 60g cocoa powder
- 100g dark chocolate, melted
- 3 eggs
- 110ml vegetable oil
- 170ml yoghurt
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 220g plain flour
- 1.5 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 100g dark chocolate
- 100ml double cream
- 50ml milk
- 1 tbsp butter
- Place your pears in a saucepan and cover with just enough water to reach the bottom of the stem, add the sugar and vanilla
- Bring the water to a boil and leave to simmer for 5 minutes.
- Remove the pears and leave them to cool in a bowl of cold water whilst preparing your cake batter
- In a stand mixer, combine the dry ingredients.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, melted chocolate, vanilla oil & yogurt.
- Gradually add the wet to the dry with the mixer on slow until fully incorporated.
- Pour into a lined loaf till 2/3 of the way up, then push in your poached pears to the bottom of the loaf tin, leaving the stem sticking out the top.
- Bake at 175C for 1hour or until a knife comes out clean.
- Leave in the tin to cool for 20mins before removing and transferring to a wire rack whilst you prepare your chocolate sauce.
- Break the chocolate into a heatproof bowl.
- Bring the cream, milk and butter to a boil in a saucepan, then pour over the chocolate and leave for 2 mins to melt the chocolate.
- Serve warm with your chocolate pear cake.
