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.
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:
-Line a 2lb loaf tin.
-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.
