Friday 23 September 2011

Chocolate and Pear Upside Down Pudding

This was a quick mid-week dessert, to use up a couple of pears from my mother's tree. She picked them while they were still hard, and it's always risky leaving pears to ripen - so often they rot from the core outwards. I chose this recipe because it used oil in the cake batter, and a lot of chocolate! The cake batter was quick to mix together, as it was just a case of dissolving the sugar into the wet ingredients and mixing the liquid into the other dry ingredients.

This pudding was delicious, although it doesn't make a very pretty picture! I think it would have been better if the pears were riper - or cooked a little first, before using them in the cake. It seemed to me that the caramel sauce needed some juice from the pears for it to work properly. Either that, or the proportions of butter and brown sugar weren't quite right. As it was, the topping was still a little granular when the cake was un-moulded, although the excess sugar eventually dissolved in the molten chocolate.

The dessert was good served warm from the oven, but just as nice eaten cold the next day.

As my pears were unripe, and I only had two large fruit, I sliced them thinly and still had enough to cover the base of a 23cm pan. If making it again with ripe or tinned pears, I would use more and slice them more thickly, as in the recipe.

6 comments:

Phil in the Kitchen said...

I love pears in cakes and puddings and this sounds delicious.

Unknown said...

oooh... pears and chocolate... nice work!... and the really spongy, puddingy batter... heaven!

Lucie said...

Chocolate and pears are a gorgeous combination...this looks delicious! Lucie x

Katie said...

Chocolate and pear is a yummy combination. I like how the top looks all sticky and gooey. I'm so jealous of your mums pear tree

Chele said...

Chocolate in a sweet after dinner treat will always get a thumbs up from me, but even more so when it has home grown goodies added to it too.

Caroline said...

It looks delicious - I love pears and chocolate together and I adore the texture of cooked pears (or tinned ones, should I admit that!)

I bet it'd be amazing with custard too.