12 Portions
Medium
15 minutes
60-70 minutes
If you want to try a nice cake with yummy layers, easy to prepare and perfect to eat for dessert or coffee/tea time: this is the cake for you! I’d say it’s a classic in many cultures but I added this extra “Vale touch” to make it a bit more special. Please give this recipe a try and let me know if you like it as much as I do.
Ingredients
For the dough:
- 300 g flour
- 100 g butter (in cubes)
- 100 g sugar
- 16 g baking powder
- 1 egg
For the pear puree:
- 2-3 pears (600 g approx.)
- 4-5 tbsp brown sugar
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 6 cloves
For the lemon pastry cream:
- 400 ml milk (or 200 ml cream + 200 ml water)
- Lemon skin from 1 lemon (big pieces)
- 100 g sugar
- 3 egg yolks
- 40 g corn starch
For the pear juice sauce:
- 200 ml pear juice (from the pear puree)
- 2 tsp corn starch
Instructions
For the dough:
- Mix with your hands, hand mixer or cooking machine the flour, sugar, baking powder and butter on a bowl.
- Add the egg and keep mixing until you get crumbles.
- Put the bowl on the fridge for 30 minutes approx.
- Meanwhile prepare your pear puree and pastry cream.
- Preheat the oven at 180°C. Prepare your mould (⌀28) with butter and flour so that the cake doesn’t stick.
- Add 2/3 of your crumbles to the mould. Use a spoon or your hands to press the crumbles together until you get a smooth surface.
- Once your pear puree and pastry cream are ready, add them over the pressed crumbles. First a layer of the pear puree and then the layer of the pastry cream. At the end, add the last part of your crumbles covering the pastry cream.
- Bake for approx. 40 minutes at 180°C.
For your pear puree:
- Wash and peel the pears. Cut the pears in four pieces each, remove the seeds.
- Put 500-600 ml water on a pot. Add the pear pieces, sugar, cinnamon and cloves. Cook on a low temperature for approx. 10-15 minutes. Poke the pear with a fork, they should be soft inside.
- Split the pear pieces from the juice. Use now a hand blender or a food processor to blend the pears until you get a smooth puree.
- *Don’t throw away the juice. You can make a hot sauce to serve your cake and the rest drink it as normal juice with some water.
For the lemon pastry cream:
- Put the milk to boil with the lemon skin on a low temperature until it boils (5 minutes approx.).
- Mix on a bowl the egg yolks and the sugar with the help of a whisk, until they are well mixed together. Add the corn starch and stir again.
- Take out the lemon skin from the milk. Now add the boiled milk slowly into the bowl (with the egg, sugar, corn starch mixture) stirring constantly.
- Now put the milk back into the pot and cook for about 2 minutes on a low temperature whisking vigorously, until the cream thickens.
For the hot pear sauce:
- Make sure to take out the cloves and cinnamon sticks from the juice, using a sieve.
- You will get approx. 500 ml of juice. You need 200 ml to make a sauce to put over 6 portions of the cake approx.
- Add the 200 ml of juice to a non-stick pan, add the corn starch and stir. Cook it for approx. 3-5 minutes.
- Serve hot.
Take the cake out of the oven. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Take it out of the mould. Let it cool down.
Serve a piece alone or with the hot sauce. Perfect together with a coffee, hot cocoa/chocolate or tea.
*You can also use apples instead of pears.