The supermarkets have plenty of nice pears at the moment so I thought I’d try this recipe.
As you can see from my photo, I must have been having a wee bit of a senior moment when I took it because the pudding is upside-down on the plate, I did peel the greaseproof paper off the bottom of it, although it looks as if it’s still on. I know what was going through my head when I did it, I was thinking it was the upside-down pear pudding I sometimes do, but that is really quite different. I’ll be doing this one again as it went down very well with some cream, but as usual Jack thinks it would be even nicer with custard!
You need:
5 small pears, peeled, halved and cored
100g or 4 oz butter, plus extra for greasing
100g or 4 oz light brown muscovado sugar
100g or 4 oz black treacle
125ml or half a cup of whole milk
140g or just under 6 oz plain flour
1 level teaspoon ground ginger
a few shakes of cinnamon
1 level teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 medium egg, beaten
1. Heat your oven to gas mark 2 or 150 C (130 C fan assisted oven)
Grease an 18cm square cake tin (I think mine is actually a bit bigger)Line the base with baking parchment or greaseproof paper.
Arrange the pears cut side down in the bottom.
2. Melt the butter,treacle and sugar gently on a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Stir in the milk and leave to cool a little.
3. Sift together the flour, spices and bicarbonate of soda. Beat it into the melted butter mixture along with the beaten egg, I just used a hand balloon whisk to do this.
4. Spread the mixture evenly into the prepared cake tin, giving it a bit of a ‘dunt’ on the worktop to make sure there are no air pockets.
5. Bake for about 1 hour, using the usual skewer method to make sure the centre is cooked through. If it isn’t cooked but the top is browning too much then cover the top with some baking parchment or foil to prevent burning.
Eat!
There is a metric/imperial measurements site here.
So a pudding in the UK is a cake? Hmmm. Is black treacle molasses? We silly Americans!
P.S. what is the difference between cream and custard? đŸ™‚
Peggy Ann,
Here is a recipe for real egg custard. http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/3087/real-egg-custard.aspx
We can buy very good tinned custard though and it also comes in cartons or you can make it up with milk and custard powder. Cream is the stuff you get at the top of full fat milk, that’s single cream, double cream is much thicker usually and you can also get cream for whipping into a thick consistency which you can pipe into shapes. I think that you call double cream heavy cream but I remember reading Mark Twain years ago and he said that the American public were being duped by their dairy farmers because European cream tasted so much better than what he got in the US. I can’t imagine it’s like that now though!
Peggy Ann,
Black treacle is molasses. I think this is more of a pudding than a cake because of the pears in it.
Hmm – not silly just different!
That looks yummy! I love gingerbread and I love pears. A great combination. I believe I could veganize this very easily. The hard part would be to do the conversions!
Joan,
I meant to put in the imperial measurements too, I’ve done it now and added a conversion site to the end of the recipe which you might find useful. I think you could even use tinned pears and use some of the juice or syrup as a substitute for the egg, or do you have a vegan egg substitute? I never know how much treacle to put in and just guess using a couple of spoonsful of the stuff, a nightmare to measure out!
You can buy dry egg replaced to which you add water. But several years ago I came across a simple recipe: for one egg, whisk together 2 Tbsp. flour, 1 Tsp. baking powder, 1/2 Tsp. baking soda, and 3 Tbsp. water until frothy, and then add to your recipe. Just double or treble for more than one egg. This does not, of course, work when making things that require the stickiness of eggs, like pumpkin pie or custards or meringues.
I really should re-read my comments before posting! That should have been egg ‘replacer’, not egg ‘replaced’.
Joan,
I was just thinking that surely dry egg wasn’t any better than fresh eggs too! You used to be able to get dry egg powder during the war and my mum said that it was better than fresh eggs, I wonder what it really was?!
Joan,
That’s quite handy to know because there have been times in the past when I realised I had no eggs left just when I needed some for a recipe!
Yes, it’s handy for that, too. Never goes bad, doesn’t need to be kept in the fridge, always on hand. And I swear that if I don’t tell, no one notices the difference when I use this instead of eggs.