Upside-down Pear and Blueberry Cake

I've been given some windfall Conference pears which, although bruised in places, are still so hard that they are never going to ripen for eating. Fortunately, I love pears in any form and both Hubs and CT will eat them cooked. I toyed with the ideas of a chocolate or gingerbread upside down cake, but decided in the end to be a little more subtle; I flavoured the cake batter with orange zest, and added some dried blueberries soaked in orange juice, too.

I basically followed this recipe from Nigel Slater, although I quartered the pears before cooking, as there were so many bruises to cut away. I needed to use 4 pears to get enough quarters to fill the base of the cake tin. I made the cake batter by the all-in-one method, using SR flour and just beating all the ingredients together, adding the grated zest of a medium orange, plus 50g of dried blueberries which had soaked in orange juice for 2 hours. I used the unabsorbed orange juice instead of the tablespoon of milk in the recipe.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of using a springform tin, and most of the honey flavoured sauce, which should have formed round the pears, ended up on the oven floor. Despite that, the cake was still very tasty, with just the slightest hint of honey still being noticeable, and the orange flavour complimenting the pears and blueberries very well. The pear juices made the sponge very moist although it still seemed quite light; this is definitely a dessert type of cake, best served with whipped cream or a spoonful of natural yogurt.