Chocolate & pear cake
By Good Food
A decadent sponge with moist pears and crunchy nuts, topped with a soured cream and dark chocolate frosting
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Prep:45 mins
Cook:1 hrs 5 mins
- Easy
Nutrition per serving
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kcal 806
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fat 55g
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saturates 24g
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carbs 65g
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sugars 48g
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fibre 5g
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protein 13g
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salt 0.8g
Ingredients
- 250g pack butter, melted, plus a little extra for the tin
- 250g caster sugar
- 200g self-raising flour
- 50g wholemeal flour
- 100g ground almonds
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp mixed spice
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- good grating nutmeg
- 50g whole hazelnuts, finely chopped
- 50g whole almonds with skins on, finely chopped
- 50g pistachios, finely chopped
- 50g macadamia nuts, finely chopped
- 100g dark chocolate, finely chopped, or dark chocolate chips
- 3 large eggs, beaten
- 1 tsp almond extract
- 2 pears, peeled, cored and diced
- 300ml pot soured cream
- 100g dark chocolate, broken into chunks
- 100g milk chocolate, broken into chunks
Method
Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Butter and line the base and sides of a deep, 20cm loose-bottomed round cake tin. Mix the sugar, flours, ground almonds, baking powder and spices in a big bowl. Mix together the chopped nuts. Set aside 2 heaped tbsp of them for decoration and stir the rest into the dry ingredients with the chopped chocolate or chips. Whisk together the melted butter, eggs and almond extract.
Tip the butter mixture into the dry ingredients and stir thoroughly to combine, then fold in the diced pear. Scrape the mixture into the tin and bake for 45 mins, then cover with foil and bake for 20 mins more until a skewer poked in comes out clean. Cool in the tin overnight.
For the icing, put the soured cream and chocolate chunks in a small pan. Heat very gently, stirring, until melted. Chill until spreadable (overnight is fine).
Remove the cake from the tin, spread over the icing and scatter with the reserved nuts.
