MAKING BY HAND
METHOD: (makes 10-12 portions)
Cake:
Drain pears and reserve the juice*.
Cut each piece of pear in half again and arrange these in the bottom of a large (22.5cm/9″), well greased savarin or bundt tin.
Make the reserved pear juice up to 225ml with water and place this together with the other remaining ingredients listed under “CAKE” into a mixing bowl.
Blend together well then pour the batter over the pears in the prepared tin.
Bake in the lower half of a pre-heated oven @ 180°C (360°F) gas mark 4 for 45-50 minutes or until the cake is springy to the touch and starting to shrink away slightly from the sides of the tin.
Glaze:
Whilst the cake is baking, blend the golden syrup and stem ginger syrup together.
After baking, allow the cake to rest for 10 minutes before turning out onto a serving dish.
Spoon over the syrup blend, allowing it to soak into the cake.
Serve hot or cold with custard, fresh cream or ice cream.
“The Cake Mixes are great, and even my mother, who has been making cakes for over 50 years says that they are as good - well almost - as the ones she makes! My breadmaker does not have a cake programme, but I find that all the mixes cook well on the machine's jam programme, which gives them 15 minutes mixing followed by 50 minutes baking. As the bread pan has quite a large area, it produces a cake which is rather broad and flat - this doesn't affect the taste or texture, but it does make the cake a bit prone to split as it comes out of the tin. A couple of early examples ended up as (very tasty) trifles as a result! I have found that the way to cure this is to reach inside the breadmaker just at the end of the mixing and deftly remove the paddle. This not only results in a cake which is far easier to remove from the tin, but as the rich mixture inevitably sticks to the paddle, it means that we can re-live the great moment of my mother's cake making - licking the mixing spoon afterwards! Keep up the good work, Deb, especially over the question of salt in bread. Anybody who gives up bread just because of its salt content will lose out on far more goodness than they gain. If they're worried about salt, they should look at the amount in processed food! ”
Jeremy Bowles
Delicious! This recipe offers the combination of Ginger and Pear, which is nearly perfect. Why not try other varieties such as, Chocolate with a tin of Mandarins, Madeira with a tin of Fruit Cocktail, Carrot with tinned Peaches or Toffee with Pineapple or Apple pieces.