Pear and Macaroon Cake. Throw away the kitchen scales!

I’ve always been a complete sucker for allowing everything to run out before buying a replacement.  It is amazing how inventive you become when you’ve run out of petrol, loo roll, wine, cream…

This week it saw the death of the battery in my kitchen scales (a warning sign had of course been flashing for weeks and weeks) and naturally I didn't have a replacement.  So I found a calculator that I never knew existed on my computer and started inventing and converting a recipe from grams to millilitres…. I have absolutely no idea whether the calculations were accurate but they gave me something to work with and most importantly a delicious cake came out of it.  Hurrah, it was woman over machine (bar the calculator) and now I have a recipe to cook when stuck somewhere with only a measuring jug.

It is a lovely cake, slightly crunchy on the outside then soft and macaroon-like in the middle, with a base layer of soft fragrant pears. Pears and almonds, what’s not to love?  And the real bonus is that it tastes as if it's full if expensive ground almonds but instead it relies on inexpensive almond essence.

Ingredients

570 ml self-raising flour

2 tsp baking powder

400 ml caster sugar

3 large free-range eggs

1½ tsp almond essence

230 ml melted butter

3 pears

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 1560C and butter and base line a 23 cm deep round loose-bottomed cake tin.

2. Measure the flour, baking powder and sugar into a bowl and stir to combine.  Make a well in the centre and add the eggs and almond essence.  Stir the eggs and essence to combine and break up the yolks then add the melted butter and stir the whole lot together.

3. Peel and core the pears and cut into small cubes.

4. Spread half the mixture on the base of the tin and top with the pears, try and leave a 2 cm gap around the edge. Then top with the other half of the mixture.

5. Pop in the oven and cook for 1- 1¼ hours or until the cake is risen, golden brown on top and is starting to shrink away from the edges.  Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes then remove, peel off the baking paper and serve. 

It is delicious warm with cream or crème fraiche with a cup of tea or for a comforting pudding.