Flourless Chocolate and Pear Cake

This cake recipe is one of, if not the nicest cake we’ve ever made! And that’s a big statement to make! It’s so delicious – and is suitable for people who are coeliac or on a gluten free diet. We made a few changes to the original recipe so we’ll give the exact recipe as it comes from BBC Good Food and we’ll then add our few tips at the end! This would make a great cake for Christmas! Enjoy!

Recipe: Serves 8

Ingredients:

85g butter, plus 1 tbsp extra for tin

85g golden caster sugar, plus extra for tin

85g gluten-free dark chocolate

1 tbsp brandy

3 eggs, separated

85g hazelnut, toasted and ground in a food processor

4 very ripe pears, peeled, halved and cored

icing sugar, for dusting

Equipment:

Baking Parchment

Food Processor [We use a Nutribullet]

Method:

Cut a circle of baking parchment to fit the base of a 25cm loose-bottomed tin. [We use 23cm tin] Melt 1 tbsp butter and brush the inside of the tin, then line the base with the parchment and brush again with more butter. Spoon in 2 tbsp caster sugar, swirl it around to coat the base and sides, then tip out any excess.

Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of hot water, remove from the heat, stir in the brandy and leave to cool. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar in a large bowl until pale and thick; fold into the chocolate with the hazelnuts.

In a separate bowl, with a clean whisk, beat the whites until they reach a soft peak (try not to whisk them too stiffly or you’ll have trouble folding them in). Stir a spoonful of the whites into the chocolate mix, then carefully fold in the rest of them in 2 additions. Spoon into the prepared tin. Level, then arrange the pears over the mixture, cut-side down. Bake for 40 mins until the pears are soft and the cake is cooked all the way through. Leave to cool in the tin slightly before releasing it, then place on a rack to cool completely. Dust with icing sugar and serve with crème fraîche [cream or ice-cream]

Top Tips:

We use a 23 cm tin – more common cake tin size and the cake is quite thin anyways, so we prefer using the smaller size.

We use 100g of everything, rather than 85g and it works out better, in our opinion!

We use Organic Coconut Blossom Sugar rather than caster sugar.

We use 4 medium sized eggs.

You can leave out the brandy if you don’t have it or would rather not include it. The cake tastes gorgeous either way!

Any dark chocolate will do!

We read online that some people bake for 10mins and then add the pears so they don’t sink … works either way for us but might be somthing to keep in mind.

*Recipe and image from www.bbcgoodfood.com