Looking for a recipe to use our Toffe Peer herbal tea in, I thought of a cake recipe again. Infusing the butter is a very handy way to incorporate the flavour of Toffe Peer tea into the cake, and it’s a method I’ve used before. My first attempt produced a pretty good Bundt cake. Nice and tasty, but not quite what I had in mind.
So here’s a second attempt: an upside-down pear cake, with a layer of cinnamon cream, pecans and Toffe Peer herbal tea. Sweet and fruity.
Ingredients
200 grams unsalted butter
25 grams No.255 Toffe Peer
2 Conference pears
50 grams unsalted butter
100 grams light brown sugar
juice of 1/2 lemon
150 grams granulated sugar
3 eggs
150 grams self-raising flour
pinch of salt
250 ml whipping cream
2-3 teaspoons sugar
cinnamon
handful of pecans or walnuts
Preparation
To incorporate the flavour of tea or herbal tea into your batter, brewing it the traditional way isn’t ideal. After all, what goes into a cake? Butter, sugar, eggs and flour. There’s no water in it, so adding tea would make your batter too wet.
Instead, infuse the butter. Most cakes call for 150 to 200 grams of butter, so letting your tea steep in it gives you the perfect base for your cake, with all the aroma you’re after.
The Toffe Peer butter
Gently melt 200 grams of unsalted butter in a saucepan and add 25 grams of No.255 Toffe Peer. Leave to infuse over a low heat for 5 minutes, keeping the butter warm but not letting it boil. Then set the pan aside for 5 minutes.
Place your mixing bowl on a scale and tare it to zero. Pour the butter mixture through a sieve into the bowl, pressing as much butter as possible out of the tea leaves. Aim for 150 grams, and top it up to 150 grams if necessary.
Leave the butter to cool to room temperature.
Pears in sugar
It’s best to use a solid, round 20 cm cake tin. The butter, sugar and pears go in the bottom of the tin, and you don’t want any of it to leak out. Line the base with baking paper and lightly grease the sides with butter.
(Only have a springform tin? Line it entirely with baking paper. Take a sheet of baking paper and scrunch it into a firm ball. Unfold it and use it to line the springform tin, pressing the paper as flat as possible against the sides and base.)
Heat 50 grams of butter in a small saucepan and add the brown sugar. Heat until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Set aside to cool.
Meanwhile, peel the Conference pears. When nearly ripe, Conference pears are still nice and firm but sweet. Cut them into eight wedges.
Pour the butter and sugar mixture into your tin and cover it completely with the pear wedges. Drizzle the pears with a little lemon juice. (If you don’t want to use a whole lemon for just a little juice, simply use bottled juice.)
Make the cake
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees.
Add 150 grams of sugar to the butter in your mixing bowl and beat on low speed until creamy. Then add the eggs one at a time, waiting each time until the egg is fully incorporated. Next, gently beat in the self-raising flour and salt.
Pour the batter over the pears and bake the cake for 50-55 minutes, until cooked through. The cake is ready when the top springs back nicely when pressed gently.
Leave the cake to cool in the tin for a while before turning it out onto a plate or cake stand.
Not quite there yet
An upside-down cake like this should look lovely all on its own. To be honest, I didn’t quite manage that. And because I felt it was still missing a little something flavour-wise, I added a layer of cream to the cake. So much for the decoration—but it tastes better!
So I spread a layer of whipped cream over the cake and finished it with a touch of cinnamon and chopped pecans. Walnuts would work too.
That way, alongside the sweet pear, your cake gets a hint of spice and a crunchy bite from the nuts. Perfect.
