Pear and Marzipan Torte

This is one ugly cake! LOL! In addition, the lack of any variation of colour has made it very difficult to photograph. It is an adaptation of a recipe given by a poster on the BBC Food Messageboards, which originally used plums. She wrote that the recipe originally came from the Good Housekeeping (50th Anniversary Edition) Cookbook, and was called Plum and Marzipan Kuchen.

The basics of the recipe are a shortcake/scone-like dough base, a layer of marzipan, a layer of fruit and a streusel topping. From the description given by the original poster, I expected the results to be slightly different - she described the base and marzipan puffing up around the fruit, and the top becoming golden and crunchy. This just didn't happen for me! Part of the problem might have been my misreading of the instructions - I just mixed the egg into the dough ingredients instead of beating it in, which might have made it more cakey in texture. There wasn't much juice from the fruit either, so the final torte was on the dry side - it really needed the accompanying whipped chantilly cream to help it down.

Ingredients

160g SR flour

125g butter

finely grated zest of two lemons

50g light muscovado sugar

50g ground almonds

1 large egg

175g marzipan - I used golden but white might be better.

25g flaked almonds - crushed slightly between your fingers to break up the flakes a bit

3 large ripe pears - such as Williams or Comice

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C and line the base of a 9"(23cm) diameter springform or loose-based tin with baking paper or silicone sheet.

Rub the butter into the flour, then mix in the lemon zest, sugar and ground almonds. Weigh 50g of this mixture into a small bowl and add the flaked almonds.

Beat the egg into the large portion of flour mix, then spread the resulting dough into an even layer in the base of the prepared tin.

Roll the marzipan into a circle slightly smaller than the tin and place it on the dough base. Peel, core and slice each pear into 8 pieces, and arrange neatly on the marzipan.

Sprinkle the set aside streusel and almond mix evenly over the fruit, then bake for about 45-50 minutes, until the base layer is fully cooked (I tested with a probe which changed colour when the cake was baked). Cool in the tin for at least 10 minutes before removing sides. Can be served warm or at room temperature.

Although this wasn't unpleasant to eat, it was slightly on the dry and heavy side, and the dominant flavour was the lemon zest in the dough, rather than the pears or marzipan (even though I used high quality marzipan with 60% almonds). The light streusel topping also allowed the pear slices to dry out during cooking. It wasn't a patch on the pear and almond cake I made recently; sadly, not a keeper.