Pear and Amaretto Cake

To continue the extravaganza with our bounty of pears, I found a pear and amaretto loaf cake recipe in Leith’s Baking Bible. Pear and almond are a fantastic combination, so I was really looking forward to trying this one. Loaf cakes keep and freeze well, which works well for my waistline as I don’t have to eat it all at once!

The recipe called for soaking the pears in 2 tablespoons of amaretto. I found that the amaretto flavour was quite mild after the cake was baked, so would probably add a bit more next time or soak the pears overnight in the liqueur.

Loaf cakes can be quite dense, but egg whites added a nice lightness.

This loaf cake recipe is a bit different to the usual fruited loaf recipes as it has a crumble topping.

Mmm… cake fresh out of the oven and it smelled amazing!

Here is the finished cake. It was very tasty and the pear and almond/amaretto combination was lovely. My only criticism is that I think it could have used more amaretto flavour.

Best served warm and with a dollop of greek yogurt.

Apple Crumble Sponge

I fancied a really comforting dessert, kinda like apple pie. I noticed this recipe in my favourite baking book, Eric Lanlard’s Home Bake and thought this would be the perfect combination.

I love using my springform tin, it doesn’t get enough use. I’ll need to work on that. (cheesecake anyone?!)

The batter was super easy to put together; a simple sponge.

Peeling the apples was the most difficult and time consuming task for this recipe.

But the end result was definitely worth it.

Once the sponge layer and apple layer were put together, I topped them with the crumble layer.

I’m not sure if I used too much flour in the crumble mixture, (although I thought I followed the recipe exactly) but the end result of the topping came out a bit dry rather than crumble-y. I will definitely do this recipe again as even though the crumble wasn’t perfect, it tasted delicious! I have a feeling this will be a regular one in my repertoire come autumn.