Gingerbread and Pear Loaf Cake
Wintery, sticky and comforting, this is the perfect cake for the mince pie haters! The sliced pears look pretty enough to lift it above the average loaf cake. Enjoy a chunk to lift you from that mid afternoon lull, or slice delicately and serve with ice cream for a wholesome dessert.
Music: The Pogues. Fairytale of New York
Ingredients:
-2 poached Comice or Williams Pears (use our poached pears recipe or use tinned)
-250g plain flour
-1tsp bicarbonate of soda
-1tbsp ground ginger
-1tsp ground cinnamon
-1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
-100g butter
-100g golden syrup
-150g black treacle
-75g dark brown sugar
-Zest 1 lime + 1tbsp lime juice
-2 medium eggs, beaten
-100ml milk
-100g stem ginger chopped
-1 tbsp ginger syrup from the jar
Instructions:
-Melt the butter, syrup and black treacle with the sugar then leave to cool.
-Combine flour, bicarb and spices.
-Whisk the eggs into the wet ingredients, making absolutely sure that the mix has cooled enough not to cook the eggs.
-Add the lime zest and juice and then fold into the flour mix. Finally, fold through the milk. You should have a fairly thick batter.
-Stir through the chopped ginger.
-Slice the pears and arrange in the base of the loaf tin.
-Bake at 180c for 45 minutes to an hour. The cake is cooked when a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.
-Cool for 30 minutes in the tin, then remove and spoon over 1tbsp of the ginger syrup.
