[food] smitten kitchen's pear bread

[kaberett]

Quite an old recipe, so entirely in terms of volume rather than weight. As Deb says, this is weirdly much better on days two and three (and onward) than it is fresh out of the oven; we're now most of the way through my first attempt, of which the major lesson was "no, grease the silicone Bundt pan more than that, Alex, and really do leave it to rest for the full ten minutes", and as I'm likely to make more I'm writing the recipe up here.

I note for posterity that I was using Very Definitely Very Ripe Conference pears for this, and four of them, so they were rather damper than the original recipe calls for; I eyeballed the amount more flour to add (~100g) based on the consistency of the batter & it worked out pretty well.

Ingredients
dry:
375g self-raising flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
(bonus nutmeg, cardamom)
wet:
170g butter
3 eggs, lightly beaten
400g (!!) sugar (I used a mix of white & golden)
some vanilla extract
2-4 "firm, ripe" pears

Method
1. Preheat oven to 175 °C. Grease & flour a pan (sk recommends one 10" tube pan or two 9"x5" loaf pans).
2. Sift together dry ingredients (or dump them all in a bowl and give them a good stir with a fork, I'm not fussy, by which I mean I routinely consider life too short for sifting).
3. In another bowl, combine butter and sugar (half-heartedly cream), eggs (add a tablespoon of the flour at this point if it looks like curdling), vanilla.
4. Peel the pears, then finely grate them into the wet ingredients bowl & stir to combine. The riper they are, the mushier this step will be.
5. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, and mix until just combined. If it's looking far too runny, use your skill & judgement to add an appropriate amount more flour.
6. Transfer the batter to the prepped pan(s) and bake until an inserted skewer comes out clean (~70 minutes): the top will have an excellent brown, firm crust.
7. Leave to cool in pan for ten minutes, then try turning it out.
8. You can try it now, but it really is better on the second day.

Comments

[ewt]

Ooh! Sounds tasty.

I bake by volume anyway a lot of the time, because I grew up doing it and it feels more intuitive to me as a result. I finally bought better scales so cooking by weight isn't a giant faff, but I think it'll take a while for me to be as comfortable with it as I am with a measuring cup.

[tree_and_leaf]

Fruit based cakes very often are better on the second day, I find.