Chocolate Almond Pear Cake

Get me a chocolate cake when you come home Mama. No other flavor please !!! These are the words which I get to hear from my 4 year old sweet little niece on Thursday nights when I would be going home on weekend. Chocolate has spelled it’s magic over the little girl. She wouldn’t mind asking for a second helping. Though her mother wouldn’t let her loose. Which is good in fact, because there has to be someone who keeps a tab over all the pampering a kid gets.

And truly, it’s not just the kiddo who gets all the fun. There is a parity when it comes to reward. The acceptance of a chocolate cake by a 4 year old is as huge as getting your food reviewed by a renowned critic. And in order to survive the criticism, it lies on me to get a good recipe every other time. I came across this dark chocolate cake with pears sometimes back, if I can recall correctly, it was last year when the pears had left the market. And I was left with no other choice but to wait for the next autumn.

But this time, I got engrossed in too many other activities; restaurant reviews, blog events, a failed attempt to move from wordpress.com to wordpress.org {more on that later}. And that recipe never re-occurred to me, even when the carts and shelves were loaded with this sweet fragrant fruit, until I got the call from my niece on last Thursday.

This cake has got lots of brown sugar, which not only gives it a dark color but also a hint of caramel infused through deep and intense flavor of a good quality cocoa. And the soft and mushy chunks of pear make it more moist, because of which it can be kept for 2 days. In case, you want a bit of crunch as well, feel free to add nuts of your choice, like I added chopped whole almonds. And the best part is that you get an excuse of baking this cake more often because of all the healthy ingredients which go in to; brown sugar, olive oil, almonds, pears. So don’t stop yourself from baking this, if you are thinking it as just another chocolate cake.

Ingredients

2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup boiling water
1 cup olive oil
2 cups brown sugar
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 pears diced
1/2 cup chopped almonds

Instructions

1. Whisk together flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl and keep aside.
2. Add cocoa powder to boiling water and mix well.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, sugar and vanilla extract.
4. Beat in eggs one by one until smooth.
5. Add half of the flour mix into egg mix and beat well.
6. Add in cocoa liquid to the batter and add rest of the flour and mix well.
7. Fold in the chopped almonds and pear.
8. Pour the batter in a 9 inch greased spring form cake tin and bake for about 1 hour at 180 degree C preheated oven, until the tester inserted into the center of cake comes out clean.
9. Let cool in tin for 10 minutes and then invert on to wire rack to let cool completely.
10. Sprinkle some icing sugar over top, while serving.