Chocolate and Pear Cake

I've been stocking up on pears. They're my favourite winter fruit by far, and they will sit in our fruit bowl throughout the week while I slowly consume them (this is key since we now have a tiny apartment refrigerator - whatever can stay at room temperature, does).

Yesterday, I peeked into the fruit bowl to find three pears, a little too soft for my liking. With that in mind I headed over to Smitten Kitchen, where there is a great recipe index searchable by fruit, vegetable, season, food type, etc., etc. Under 'pear' there were tempting recipes, like pear and almond tart or the more recent roasted pear and chocolate chunk scones; in the end I went with the bittersweet chocolate and pear cake, which would utilize all three of my Anjou pears.

For the chocolate portion, I used a 60% Hispaniola bar from The Jones Chocolate Company, along with a bar of 64% Maralumi from Michel Cluizel. While the flavours worked well (especially the earthiness of the former), increasing the percentage of the chocolate to tone down the sweetness would have been a better choice.

The cake batter itself came together easily, though as others noted in the comments, the pieces of pear and chocolate didn't really become enveloped in the cake as they were meant to. Maybe a little less would have given the batter the additional room necessary. These things aside, the egg-y base provides a lovely canvas for the pear and chocolate, and we will happily enjoy as the snow falls.

I thought I'd include a few shots from Deep Freeze yesterday. We made it over with our friend Claire and had an incredible time. We enjoyed the perfect weather (as Sharon notes here, 2011 was freezing and last year's warm temperatures weren't any better), taking advantage of fire pits scattered throughout the site, skating and Bailey's poured through ice. Thanks again to the Arts on the Ave crew for another great year!

We ran into Tanya and Tom and Willow

The Village Pig