Pear and Ginger Upside Down Cake
Lost, a tatty, food splattered magazine clipping. It’s the recipe for a much loved pear and ginger upside cake. I’d already bought the pears and checked the pantry for treacle and spices, but the recipe wasn’t where I expected it to be. It’s gone.
With friends arriving shortly for Sunday lunch, I urgently searched my “Eat Your Books” index which turned up 161 pear dessert recipes. I made the snap decision to make Jane Grigson’s Springfield Pear Cake on the basis that an EYB user commented that if you want leftovers make two!
I needed to par cook my pears as they were quite firm, but ripe pears can be put directly into the cake once peeled and cored. I had crystallized ginger rather than preserved ginger in syrup, so a few other changes were necessary, but the end result was wonderful and I do wish I’d made two cakes!
This cake is loosely based on Jane Grigson’s Springfield Pear Cake from her Fruit Book.
top layer:
90g butter
90g brown sugar
2 tablespoons maple syrup
5 beurre bosc pears
Juice of a lemon in cold water
cake:
125 g butter
125 g castor sugar
2 large eggs
100g spelt flour
3 level teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup ground almonds
2 tablespoons brandy
2 tablespoon Greek yoghurt
1/4 cup crytallized ginger, finely chopped
Peel, quarter and core the pears. As you work, slip the peeled pears into a small bowl of cold water mixed with the juice of a lemon. This will prevent discolouration.
Drain the pears and lay them on a baking paper lined tray and bake at 160 C for 20-30 minutes. They will just be starting to brown on the edges. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.
Increase the oven temperature to 170C
Butter a deep 24cm pie dish or shallow cake tin (not springform).
Melt the butter for the top layer, add the sugar and syrup. Continue to stir the mixture over a low hear until thick and caramel coloured.
Pour the caramel into the base of buttered pie dish.
Arrange the pear quarters in a tightly packed circle in the caramel.
Cream the butter and sugar for the cake, then beat in the eggs one at a time.
Add the flour, baking powder, ground almonds, brandy and yoghurt and beat into a smooth batter.
Stir in the chopped crystallized ginger.
Tip the cake batter on to the top of the pears and spread it to the edges of the pie plate.
Bake until the cake is firm to touch in the centre, about 30 minutes.
Remove the cooked cake from the oven and allow to rest for 30 minutes so the heat dissipates from the syrup a little.
Lay a serving plate over the pie dish and quickly flip it over so the the cake is pear side up on the plate and the syrup flows down the sides.
Serves 8
Delicious with dollop of thick vanilla yoghurt.
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24 comments on “Pear and Ginger Upside Down Cake”
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Creative Commons Copyright Licence
Please Pass the Recipe by Sandra Gay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Please Pass the Recipe 
What a beautiful cake! Sounds delicious too 🙂
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Thanks Erika…
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I’ve spent hours this weekend searching unsuccessfully for a pre-Internet magazine clipping of a blueberry dessert I remember making many times. Ouch. Maybe I ought to just see if Jane Grigson had one. She clearly didn’t let you down!
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Why do we do this to ourselves? Yes look at Jane Grigson, she’s wonderful.
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I lost a newspaper clipping with my mum’s favourite blackcurrant tartlets. I was bereft. Love ginger and pear together – this looks fantastic.
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I just wish I’d glued that clipping into my recipe folder, just laziness that I hadn’t! Have you been able to come up with an approximation of the blackcurrant tarts?
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Sadly no. There was this special pastry….
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I love the combination of pears and ginger. That is one gorgeous cake Sandra!
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Thanks Lidia, it tasted great too! How are you doing?
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This looks so decadent and delicious! 🙂 I need to bake more. Period.
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This is a seriously good cake to make when the weather cools and delicious pears are in season
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I just love ginger in anything. This is a lovely recipe to have.
Something similar happened to me recently. I was all psyched up to bake and I hunted up a chocolate and orange biscuit recipe. I’d torn it out of a weekend magazine and found holes where the ingredients were meant to be. Luckily there was an email address so I wrote to the author and she emailed it to me.
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Isn’t it annoying! My stand in was quite a discovery so the loss of the old recipe was a blessing in some ways
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This is a very delicious recipe. Something about ground almonds and pears together in a cake. A texture to bite in that has juicy flavorful caramelized piece of fruit.
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Absolutely right. This is a wonderful cake!
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ugh. I have done the same so many times I am angry just thinking about this…it empathize with you!
But it looked like all turned out well in the end.
I hope you find your recipe!
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I did turn out well, the old recipe will turn up when I least expect it, I’m sure.
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Your upside down cake looks beautiful from that angle! Makes me want to bake one now. I love pears and ginger. Perfect combination!
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Thanks Dolly it was delicious!
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Those tattered, food splattered recipes are priceless to us, aren’t they? I hope you find yours soon…
In the meantime, it looks like you’ve found another delicious recipe to fill in… And I have a feeling that this one will be just as tattered and splattered! It looks fabulous… Just beautiful. ❤
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After making the posted recipe, I’m not too upset about losing that original recipe, it was a fine replacement
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Sounds lovely…I’m going to have to cook a pear cake sometime soon! Had a gorgeous pear and almond cake at a friend’s hose recently and she has given me t he recipe… 🙂
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Thanks Sue. Pear and almond, pear and ginger, pears make beautiful cakes.
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Yum!
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