Pear and Almond- a piece of heaven on a crappy day.

I am tempted to take a leaf out of Wakeup’s book and have a Monday Moan (OK, I know it’s Wednesday) but am afraid that if I start I’ll never be able to stop. I actually cried on he phone today with the plumber, begging him to come and fix the water. I just want a bath, I sobbed. The hot water is buggered. As is the timer for the heating. So we have ferocious heat from dusk to dawn-whether the timer is on or not- and no hot water. At all. This has been going on for ten days.

I have been diverted by two things….we have accepted a (new and slightly lower, but if we can move, it’ll all be worth it) offer on our house. I cried again when they called. And secondly, my dad’s wife called for advice on baking. I was so happy I actually clapped my hands together with glee. Junior is shortly to have his very first birthday party, and she was looking for suggestions. I waxed lyrical about how easy cakes were once you mastered the basic sponge, and am going over there later this week to see how it’s going. It got me thinking about cake though, which lead to an inevitable baking session, of which this was the result…

Pear and Almond tray bake

Ingredients
200g butter, softened
200g caster sugar
3 large free-range eggs
100g self-raising flour, sifted
100g ground almonds
1-1.5 tsp almond essence
scant tsp baking powder
3 pears, cored and chopped

Method
Beat butter and sugar together until llight and fluffy.
Beat eggs in, one by one, adding tsp flour with each to prevent curdling.
Add flour, almonds and baing powder and mix well, then add essence.
Stir through pear pieces- I keep skin on so that they don’t disintigrate during cooking, and becasue I got pears with red skins which look lovely in batter….
Turn into a greased 20cm square baking tin and bake at 180C for about 45-50 minutes until skewer comes out clean.

To make it even easier, just bung all the ingredients in the mixer, then stir through pear pieces before turning into tin.

It smells fab when cooking and is so nice wamr, from the tin, with lashings of cream. If you wanted to you could even grate some marzipan into the mix too…..