This will be the last pear based recipe for a while, the trees have done their dash for this season. The pears maybe over, but the good news is the feijoa season is now upon us, so you can expect some feijoa based goodies in the near future.
Today’s recipe is slightly adapted from the one found at Adventure Gather Eat. After making this I have decided that I do not use cardamom anywhere near enough.
Ingredients:
Cake:
25 g melted butter
1 cup white sugar
1 free-range egg
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups of self-raising flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 pear, pealed, cored and sliced
Topping:
25 g melted butter melted butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon cinnamon
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 180°C (356°F).
Combine melted butter, sugar, free-range egg and buttermilk in a food processor and mix.
Sift together dry cake ingredients. Add wet ingredients and fold together. Transfer to a greased cake tin.
Take pear slices and press vertically into the top of the cake in an aesthetically pleasing pattern.
Combine the ingredients of the topping until in a crumble consistency. Sprinkle over the top of the cake.
Bake at 180°C (356°F) for about 45 minutes, or until cake springs back when touched.
What the kids can do:
Hand washing: Don’t forget to get the kids (and grownups too of course) to wash their hands before you start. Little hands always seem to end up touching everything, including the ingredients. This is extra important given the current Covid-19 situation. For good 20 second hand wash, have them sing “happy birthday to me” twice.
Melting the butter: We do this in the microwave. Miss 5 (as of last Wednesday) likes to press the buttons, I just tell her which ones to push. I get the butter out of the microwave as it is, of course, hot.
Eggs: Pro tip for breaking eggs with a 4 year old, break eggs into a separate glass bowl before adding to your other ingredients. That way you can see and pick out any bits of shell before they are added in by mistake. I like to use free range eggs, because it is kinder to the chickens, and they also taste better. Bear in mind that raw eggs can carry Salmonella so wash little hands if they end up the raw egg. I also don’t recommend eating raw cake batter, just in case.
Mixing the ingredients: My daughter helped mix all the ingredients. The biggest messes seen to happen when sifting and mixing dry ingredients with the kids. A great tip from reader Dana M is to put a towel down underneath, which catches any stray ingredients for easy cleaning. When folding wet into dry ingredients, you want to mix thoroughly, but not too much or the cake will go flat. This usually requires the grown up to either finish off the mixing and/or intervene before things are mixed too much.
Cutting the pears: I pealed, cored and cut the pears. Miss 5 helped push the pear slices into the cake, and ate the leftover slices, of course. As the cake rose, the slices of pear disappeared into the cake. But it did come out looking quite pretty.
Keeping Them Occupied 