Easy Peasy Pear Cake

Easy peasy lemon squeezy just about sums up this pear cake recipe. It comes from my favourite Jane Grigson's Fruit Book (At Table) and she collected the recipe in France.

Youngest was looking for something new to bake and since my sister-in-law had just harvested an abundance of pears from her tree, all of which were begging to be used up quickly, I turned to the pear section of the book. Two recipes for pear cakes sat side-by-side, both French, both very similar. Youngest chose this one because the pears were mixed into the batter rather than placed on top.

There is no creaming or rubbing in. The dry ingredients are stirred together, the butter melted and mixed in along with the eggs, then the pears and lemon juice folded in and that’s it. Perfect for a child just beginning to bake all by herself.

It’s not the lightest of sponges, perhaps best served warm with cream as a dessert, but the pears are cooked in it to meltingly soft perfection, the lemon juice adding just enough spritz, and the cake disappeared very rapidly both warm and cold the next day.

Jane Grigson’s Anjou Pear Cake Recipe
500g / 1lb firm ripe pears (we used one that was still very crunchy and it turned out still crunchy in the cake!)
Juice of 1 lemon
½ cups flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
Pinch salt
75g / 1/3 cup castor sugar
2 large eggs
60g / 2oz / ¼ cup melted butter
1 tablespoon water

Preheat the oven to180C / 350F
Prepare a greased and lined 20cm/8inch cake tin.
Squeeze the lemon into a bowl.
Peel, core and chop the pears into chunks, then turn them in the lemon juice to keep them from going brown.
Stir together the dry ingredients.
Beat the eggs then add to the dry ingredients, followed by the melted butter and the water.
At this stage the mixture will still feel rather thick and lumpy.
Add the pears with all the lemon juice and it should adjust to the right soft consistency.
Pour the mixture into the lined tin, level it off and bake for about an hour until a skewer comes out clean.
The cake can be glazed with an apricot jam glaze, but we ate it just as it was.

Just When You Thought Everything Had Been Harvested...

I guess it's leek and potato soup for our Autumn festival this weekend!

Just hoping that this little guy, who hangs out in my herb garden, won't eat all those little parsley seedlings before they get established. The beautiful row of healthy plants that I had last year all went to seed at the same time, so I'm really looking forward to an abundant supply of plants again, as long as there is enough time for them to grow before we run out of sunny weather!

In the meantime, I'm all out of parsley which is a terrible fix for a herb garden to be in. it will have to be marjoram and thyme in the soup this weekend instead!

Beach Art

When summer makes a come-back and a Sunday afternoon is too hot to handle, heading for the beach seems a good idea. There the breeze is cool, the water numbingly chilly, sun warm but not uncomfortable. This time we hear the surf rumbling from the dunes before we even reach the beach. The tranquil mood of our birthday beach party is forgotten, an edgy restlessness takes its place. The waves are frothy and hurry in on each others' heels, pushing each other at an angle down the beach, with a fierce rip.

The kids play in the water for a while and then get creative on the sand... with a horse theme of course.

His name is of course Blaze.

And then a sneaky wave rushes in, blurring sharp edges.

A circle in the sand defining a territory. The power of a line on the sand is enough to deflect walkers –  two ladies power walking headed directly for the centre on their line down the beach, but took not one step into the circle, slowing and stepping around the perimeter, as if a magic wall repels all invaders.

The girls retire up the beach to begin another horse artwork.

And then it’s home again to find the heat still engulfing our farm, the early promise of Autumn beaten back by a summer that still has some reserves up its sleeve.