Reader recipe: pear chocolate cake with sauce
Serves: 10
Prep time: 30 minsTotal time: 
Recipe photograph by Ant Duncan
Reader recipe: pear chocolate cake with sauce
Cat Holdcroft from Walsall entered our chocolate cake recipe competition and won with her warm chocolate and pear cake, served with a hot chocolate sauce. ‘I love this recipe, my nana had pear trees in her garden and we made this regularly, so it reminds me of her. I always love fruit in recipes – it’s my signature. I recommend serving this warm, with some vanilla ice cream.’
Serves: 10
Prep time: 30 minsTotal time: 
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Nutritional information (per serving)
Calories
305Kcal
Fat
19gr
Saturates
9gr
Carbs
26gr
Sugars
18gr
Fibre
2gr
Protein
6gr
Salt
0.8gr
Ingredients
- 3 just-ripe pears
- 125g soft salted butter, plus 1 tbsp
- 125g caster sugar, plus 1 tbsp
- 2 medium eggs
- 3 tbsp milk
- 100g self-raising flour
- 25g cocoa powder
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 100g ground almonds
- icing sugar, to dust
For the chocolate sauce
- 150g dark chocolate (50% cocoa solids)
- 150ml whipping cream
Step by step
- Preheat the oven to 180°C, fan 160°C, gas 4 and line a 20cm diameter springform tin with baking paper.
- Peel, core and chop the pears into bite-size chunks. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a non-stick frying pan, add 1 tablespoon of caster sugar and the pears and cook on a fairly high heat for 5-7 minutes, until starting to colour. Cool, then pat the pear pieces dry on kitchen paper.
- Cream the 125g butterand 125g sugar togetherwith an electric mixer then beat in the eggs, one at a time, followed by the milk; don’t worry if it looks a little curdled. Sift in the flour, cocoa and baking powder, then mix in the ground almonds. Gently fold in the pear pieces.
- Spoon into the lined tinand bake for 40-45 minutes or until a skewer comes out without any sticky cake batter on it. Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes before releasing.
- Meanwhile, for the chocolate sauce, break the chocolate into a heatproof bowl, add the cream and set over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir every few minutes until the chocolate has melted; keep warm.
-
Dust the still-warm chocolate pear cake with icing sugar and serve with the hot chocolate sauce.To storeThe cake keeps for upto 3 days in an airtight container. It can be served at room temperature but is at its best served warm; leftovers can be microwaved to reheat.
