Category: Cake Recipes

Follow the links for lots of easy cake recipes. Or have a look at the Recipe Index for lots of other brilliant easy recipes!

All my cake recipes are made-from-scratch but are very simple and can be made quickly. Creative use of flavours means that you can have a show-stopping cake with little baking experience or skills. They look attractive but are all made with minimal cake-decorating expertise. You will find a mixture of old favourites and few unusual ones flavoured with herbs or flowers!

Cakes

Ginger and Pear Cake

Sticky Ginger and Pear Cake

This Ginger and Pear Cake brings together two flavours that are the best of friends. The spicy heat of ginger is the perfect counterpoint to the luscious sweetness of the pear. The syrup from the jar of stem ginger adds an additional hit of sugar which brings the flavours together and ensures that the cake is moist.

Another aspect of this cake which I really like is that it includes a secret pear! A whole fresh pear is added to the cake mix just before baking and ends up embedded in the cake. You don’t know about it until you cut into the cake. There is something really appealing to me, both in terms of flavour and texture, and also as it is a nice surprise, in including the pear in this way.

I was won over to stem ginger relatively recently. I have childhood memories of my parents being given jars of it at Christmas which sat in the cupboard until well past their use by date as no one really knew what to do with it! Years later, I saw a jar in the supermarket and made an impulse buy and decided to try and use it in a cake. The result was fantastic, with the stem ginger giving a complex gingery flavour unlike that provided by ground ginger. A few bakes later, I decided to add pear into the mix and this recipe is the result.

For me, one of the best aspects of baking is experimenting with different flavour combinations. If you like this Ginger and Pear Cake, you might also like Rum and Banana Bread and Lime Drizzle Cake with Coconut.

Ginger and Pear Cake

Author: Tastebotanical
Prep Time: 15
Cook Time: 45
Total Time: 1 hour
Yield: 1 loaf cake 1x
Category: Cake
Method: Baking
Cuisine: British

Print Recipe

Description

This sticky Ginger and Pear Cake brings together two flavours that are best friends! Using stem ginger brings a complexity of flavour and luscious moistness to this easy cake recipe.

Ingredients

Scale

For cake:

125 g butter
175 g caster sugar
2 eggs
175 g self-raising flour
3 pieces of stem ginger
4 tablespoons syrup from a jar of stem ginger
1 large, ripe pear

For topping:

1 piece of stem ginger
1 tablespoon of syrup from a jar of stem ginger

Instructions

Set your oven to 180 degrees centigrade or Gas Mark 4.
Grease a 450 g loaf tin and line the bottom with baking parchment.
Cream the butter with the sugar in a large bowl. (I usually soften the butter for about 30 seconds in the microwave first as it makes it much easier!)
Gradually add the eggs to the butter and sugar mixture. If it looks as if it is going to curdle, add some of the self-raising flour.
Once the eggs have been incorporated add the rest of the self-raising flour.
Finely chop your pieces of stem ginger and add them to the cake mixture along with the syrup from the jar of stem ginger.
Spoon the cake mixture into your prepared loaf tin.
Take the skin off your pear. I find the easiest way to do this is with a vegetable peeler. Cut the pear in half lengthwise and, using a small knife, remove the core and any pips. Place the two halves of the pear on top of the cake mixture.
Put the tin in the oven and bake the cake for 45 minutes.
Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool in the tin.
When the cake is cool, remove it from the tin.
To decorate the cake, using a pastry brush, paint the top with the ginger syrup. Cut up the piece of stem ginger and scatter the pieces over the top of the cake.

Ginger and Pear Cake

Keywords: cake, ginger, pear

Loved this recipe? You may also like the following recipes. Or checkout the Recipe Index.

Rum and Banana Bread

Lime Drizzle Cake with Coconut

Easy Poached Pears

Lime Drizzle Cake with Coconut

Lime Drizzle Cake with Coconut – Easy home-baking recipe

Lime Drizzle Cake. Like Lemon Drizzle Cake but with with an added tropical coconut twist. This is a very easy cake to make. It uses a basic sponge recipe which is taken to the next level by the lime and coconut flavour combination. As with all Drizzle Cakes, the icing is a simple combination of zesty fruit juice and icing sugar, so no need for fancy icing techniques. You just mix it together and pour it onto the warm cake so it adds an additional sweet and zingy punch of flavour.

Lovely limes…

I love limes. They have all the sharp citrus notes of lemons but with a more complex spicy background flavour which combines brilliantly with the richness of coconut. As well as cakes, I often use it with seafood, such as my Crab and Prawn Tart with Chilli, Lime and Coriander. It is also adds a fantastic zip of sharpness to sweet tropical fruits, such as mango, as in Mango and Lime Ice Cream.

…and creamy coconut

I use a combination of Coconut Cream and Desiccated Coconut to flavour this cake. Coconut Cream is one of my favourite ingredients for both sweet and savoury recipes. It comes in a block from which you can break off as much as you need. Once opened, you can keep it in the fridge for several weeks and use whenever you want to add a coconut hit to one of your recipes. It has a rich, creamy flavour which is great in cakes and puddings but also in Thai-style curries. If you don’t have a tin of coconut milk handy, you can just add some coconut cream to water and use that instead.

I have recently been won over to Desiccated Coconut having been put off by childhood memories of it as a dry, flavourless coating on rather unappetising shop-bought cakes. However, if you soak it in water before using, it becomes soft and flavourful and is a great addition to recipes. I guess the clue is in the name – it has had its moisture removed so you need to add it back again!

If you are inspired to explore the wonderful world of Drizzle Cakes by this recipe, you might like our recipes for Lemon Drizzle Cake and Blood Orange Drizzle Cake.