This Pear and Ginger Crumble Cake may not be a pin up looks wise but boy does this cake punch above its weight in the flavour stakes.

I have to thank Nigela for the inspiration – I was watching her Italian cookery programme and saw her using amaretti biscuits in a plum crumble. I started thinking about what other biscuits would work for this idea. I am not convinced pears would really hold up to an entire crumble but then wondered about how they’d work in a Chiara cake, which is what this cake is largely based on.

I’ve now made this twice and the second time it took about ten minutes longer to cook. I think that probably had something to do with how juicy the pears were.

I have used a cake tin liner which is like a giant cupcake case on this – you do end up with a crinkled edge to the cake that way but I would recommend using similar if you can as the cake is quite crumbly and might be difficult to move without.

Ingredients

• 150g bake stable white chocolate chunks,
• 350g peeled and chopped pears,
• 3 tablespoons creme de cacao blanc,
• 12 heaped tablespoons crumbled ginger nuts,
• 2 tablespoons ginger preserve,
• 2 teaspoons vanilla,
• 2 teaspoons baking powder,
• Juice of one lemon,
• Grated zest of 1 lemon,
• 50g cornflour,
• 200g plain flour,
• 1 egg,
• 150g icing sugar,
• 150g butter

Method

• Pre-heat the oven to 160C fan and grease and line a seven inch tin
• Peel the pears and chop into 1cm chunks, toss in the lemon juice to stop oxidisation
• Cream together the butter, vanilla, creme de cacao, ginger preserve, icing sugar and lemon zest until light a fluffy
• Add a tablespoon of the flour and whisk in (this stops the egg curdling)
• Whisk in the egg
• Whisk in the remaining flour and baking powder which will form a very sticky cohesive dough
• Stir through 100g of the pears and the white chocolate chunks
• Sprinkle half the crumbled ginger nuts over the buttered lined tin
• Spoon in the cake mixture
• Spread the mixture with a spatula so that it forms a slight well in the centre
• Put the rest of the pears on the top and press lightly into the mix
• Sprinkle over the remaining ginger nuts
• Bake for 60 minutes, possibly a little longer, until a skewer comes away clean then leave in the tin to cool
• Serve whilst still a little warm with yoghurt