Almond Pear Cake

You will love my Fresh Almond Pear Cake recipe; cinnamon and orange zest infused poached pears in a moist and super delicious cake packed with almond, vanilla, and cardamon. The ultimate, easy fall cake recipe you need to try!

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• 🌟 Why this is the best recipe
• 📝 Ingredient notes
• 👩‍🍳 How to make this recipe
• 🥣 Equipment notes
• ❓ Recipe FAQs
• ✨ More cake recipes
• Almond Pear Cake

🌟 Why this is the best recipe

1. It is rather easy – As fancy as it looks, making this Fresh Pear cake is super easy just like making your favorite loaf cake! Poaching the pears takes just a few minutes and the cake batter comes together in no time!
2. It is super delicious – I never compromise on taste! Delicious aromatic pears in lovely cardamom and vanilla unfused cake will blow your mind!
3. No special equipment is needed – All you need is a loaf pan, really, and you are good to go to make my Almond Pear cake!
4. It is super festive – Do I need to explain how fancy and festive this cake is? No more average Pear cakes, this showstopper Almond Pear Cake will steal the show on your next get-together for sure!

📝 Ingredient notes

1. Butter: Use always unsalted butter as you want to be in control of the quantity of the salt. I am using 82% fat content butter in all my recipes. In this recipe, the butter needs to be at room temperature which technically means soft enough to be able to cream but not too soft or runny so avoid last-minute microwaving
2. Granulated sugar: White granulated sugar is fine for this recipe. If feeling fancy, you can replace half of the white sugar with light brown sugar
3. Egg: Room temperature as always
4. Vanilla bean paste: Vanilla is wonderful in this cake however please please avoid using artificial vanilla! There are several great brands for fine, pure vanilla, I use Nielsen massey which I love and really recommend. I use vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla extract which has lovely vanilla bits in there too
5. Flour: Pastry flour or all purpose flour will work in the Pear cake recipe, they are so-called “soft flour” which is low on protein resulting in a delicate, tender texture
6. Baking powder: Just a small amount of baking powder will make the texture even lighter
7. Almond flour: I like adding almond flour to fall-theme cakes, it always gives a bit of marzipan taste profile to cakes. It is worth buying a good quality ground almond meal, without skin. If it is not available for us, substitute it with an equal amount of flour
8. Zest of orange: Almond pears wonderfully with orange! Using lemon or orange zest is my favorite flavoring to spice up my recipes, it makes the desserts wonderfully flavourful and aromatic. Make sure you use organic orange (or one which has no chemicals on the skin) and only grate the orange color part of the skin, but not the white
9. Cardamon: If you are not using cardamon in your cakes this time of the year, you are missing out! Beautiful, aromatic spice goes well with almost everything, try it! You can experiment with other spices eg. a teaspoon ground cinnamon or teaspoon ground cloves
10. Poached pear: Making poached pear is so easy! See my separate poached pears article for more details

🛒 You’ll find detailed measurements for all Ingredients in the printable version of the Recipe Card at the bottom of this post

👩‍🍳 How to make this recipe

1. How to poach pears

I have a full on tutorial on how to poach pears, do check that out. I love using poached pears eg. in my pear galette recipe.

Start with peeling 2 pears. Ideally chose ripe pears or slightly underripe pears for poaching, if they’re overripe, they will be too soggy after cooking.

Pay attention to the sizes too, they should not be too big in comparison to the size of your loaf tin. Worth to try them into the loaf tin and making sure that there is enough space left for the cake as well.

1. Prepare the poaching syrup by boiling water, sugar and cinnamon, and orange zest
2. Cook pears in the poaching liquid over medium heat for 5-10 minutes, do not walk away but pay attention to the consistency of the pears. Make sure they won´t get overcooked.
3. After the poaching process place the pears on paper towels, which will soak the unnecessary liquids in

💡 Top Tip: Please dry the poached pears as much as you can as too much liquid can result in an under-baked cake. If your cake won't bake even after 60 minutes it is because too much liquid stayed in the poached pears

2. How to make the almond cake batter

A basic pound cake recipe that in enhanced with almonds is used to make this Almond Pear cake. The cake batter is made with an equal amount of butter, sugar, egg, and flour.

1. Ingredients must be all measured with a Digital scale, grease a Loaf pan in advance, and pre-heat the oven to 180 C / 356°F (no fan)
2. All wet ingredients (eg. butter and egg) must be at room temperature for the batter to properly emulsify
3. Whip sugar and softened butter with an Electric hand mixer for a good 3-5 minutes until fluffy
4. Whip in room temperature egg, just until combined, then add vanilla
5. Sift dry ingredients (flour, almond flour, cardamom, salt, baking powder) before adding to the mixture
6. Fold dry ingredients into the mixture using a Rubber spatula then add orange zest
7. Pour cake batter into your prepared loaf cake pan
8. Make sure that the poached pears are fully dried before assembling the cake!
9. Press the poached pears into the cake batter
10. Hint with almond flakes (optional)

💡 Top Tip: Make sure that the pears are standing straight so that while the cake bakes they don't fall on one side or the other. Also, pay attention to the space at each end and also in between the pears for the cake batter to rise even

3. How to bake

It is super important that you are aware of the real oven temperature during baking therefore I always recommend using a Digital oven thermometer.

1. Bake the cake for 60 min or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean
2. Do not oven the oven door during baking
3. After the Pear and almond cake cooled, carefully remove it from the tin and hint with powdered sugar (optional) before serving
4. Store at room temperature or refrigerated

🥣 Equipment notes

This Almond Pear cake is pretty easy to make. You don't need fancy baking equipment. However, please try your best to gather these easy-to-find baking tools:

Digital scale: It's better than measuring cups to achieve precise measurements in baking.

Digital oven thermometer: Use this to help you find out the actual temperature of your oven.

Electric hand mixer: You will need this to cream the butter easily

Rubber spatula: super useful to fold in the ingredients without overmixing.

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