Sunday, October 26, 2008

Pear Cake with Streusel

Pears have been plentiful in the stores of late and this recipe caught my eye in one of the blog's I read. I added a streusel topping to her recipe and changed out the regular flour for whole wheat pastry flour. A few other changes here and there and I came out with a yummy not-too-sweet cake for us to snack on. Check out the original recipe...as you might like to just make it as originally written.

Pear Cake:
(adapted from All Buttoned Up's blog)

Streusel:
6 Tbs rolled oats
3 Tbs whole wheat pastry flour (for some reason I'd halved the amount of flour from the fruit crisp recipe's struesel...I might use all 6 Tbs next time)
1/4 cup Sucanat
a good pinch of salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 -1 tsp ground ginger (honestly, I can't remember how much I used)
a couple rasps of nutmeg
4 tsp agave nectar
6-8 tsp canola oil (can't remember exactly how much I used for this either :-)

Mix all together then set aside.

Dry bowl:
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour (I'd like to try a combo of spelt flour and ww pastry flour next time)
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbs Sucanat, brown sugar or reg. sugar
couple rasps of nutmeg
~1/2 tsp cinnamon

Wet bowl:
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 Tbs canola oil
1 egg (or egg replacer or 1/4 cup applesauce to make it vegan)
1/2 cup yogurt (regular or soy)
1/3 cup liquid sweetener (I used agave nectar, but recipe said brown rice syrup, maple syrup, or barley malt would work out too)
1 tsp vanilla
1 or 2 pears chopped up (I used 1 1/2 largish Bartletts and didn't bother peeling them)

Mix wet and dry bowls together and pour into a greased 8" by 8" pan. Add streusel to top and bake for ~35-45 minutes at 350 degrees. Do the toothpick test to make sure it's done in the middle.

Let it cool for about 5 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a rack to cool.

Serve alone or with some agave sweetened Fage Greek yogurt. :-)

4 comments:

Mike said...

Mmmm... Looks yummy. Will have to try it. Mom used to make pear cake that was just incredible! So there's a high standard.

Erndog said...

Mike- It's comments like this that terrify me! You'd best stick with your mom's version...you'll only be disappointed if you tried any other.
I cut the oil by half and used half the original amount of sugar. So, maybe take baby steps and try All Buttoned Up's original recipe but with extra spices first?

Deb Schiff said...

That looks amazing!

I tinker with recipes quite a bit since I just use agave and no other sweeteners. I would definitely try this with maybe the addition of a teaspoon or two of coconut flour to balance out the liquids.

Nice job!

Mike said...

@erin: Heheh... I was going for the intimidation.

@deb: Yeah - a touch of coconut sounds good.