Fall

Pear and Olive Oil Cake

by:
December  4, 2015
4.3
3 Ratings
  • Prep time 30 minutes
  • Cook time 1 hour
  • Makes one 9" cake
Author Notes

My landlord gave me 4 Comice pears, so I turned to Teddie's Apple Cake and Maialino's Olive Oil Cake for advice.

This cake is about the affinities among pears, olive oil, and cake. I like how the skins leave something for your teeth. —peanut butter music

What You'll Need
Ingredients
  • butter for the pan
  • 4 ripe pears, such as Comice
  • 1/4 cup meyer lemon juice (from 2-3 lemons)
  • 1 tablespoon meyer lemon zest
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Directions
  1. Turn your oven to 350° F. Butter a 9" springform pan and line it with parchment paper.
  2. Crush the zest into the sugar with your fingers until evenly distributed.
  3. Core and cut the pears into 1" pieces with the skins on. Put them in a bowl. Pour lemon juice over them, toss, and let sit.
  4. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
  5. In yet another (large) bowl, crack the eggs. Whisk with the sugar until pale and expanded in volume, then whisk in the olive oil until nice and smooth. Add almond extract and whisk some more.
  6. Dump in the juicy pears, then sift the flour mixture on top of them. Fold them both into the egg mixture. Stop right when the flour disappears.
  7. Scrape the raw cake into the pan, even it out, and bake for an hour. It should be dark brown and smell good; a toothpick poking it should come out clean. (You might need more time. You might also need foil to cover the top if it looks like it's about to burn.) After 30 minutes on a wire rack, the cake can be unbuckled. Let it cool to body temperature, a couple of hours.
  8. Cut the cake with a bread knife. Leftover slices are excellent with or without 10 minutes in a 350° F oven.
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1 Review

Starmade
Starmade December 23, 2017
This was a delicious cake which I made with a couple of adaptations. I like less sweet cakes and so cut the sugar by a quarter cup, and the oil by a quarter cup as well. It does need the full hour baking time (I didn't quite get it to one hour and the cake was a bit damp in the middle, but very good anyway).