Food and Drink: Passover pear cake!
Ahead of Pesach, we pick out a yummy recipe by Leah Koenig from Modern Jewish Cooking!
One of the best Passover cakes we’ve tasted. Ever. One of those ‘I can’t believe it’s a Pesach cake’ cakes.
We’ve tried it with plums and almonds, and figs and hazelnuts and it is just so great!
You can replace the matzo meal with plain flour for a cake any time of the year.
In her book Modern Jewish Cooking, Leah Koenig explains that she isn’t a fan of baking with matzo meal, but in this cake it’s very well hidden.
Ingredients
- 60g (½ cup/2 oz) pecans, chopped
- 110g (½ cup, firmly packed/3¾ oz) brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Recipe by Leah Koenig from Modern Jewish Cooking, Chronicle Books, 2015. Extracted from Monday Morning Cooking Club: Now For Something Sweet published by HarperCollins, priced £25 (hardback) - ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 4 eggs
- 230g (1 cup/8 oz) caster sugar
- 125ml (½ cup/ 4 ¼ fl oz) oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 140g (1 cup/5 oz) superfine matzo meal (cake meal)
- 4 medium pears, unpeeled, sliced
Serves: about 10
- Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4). Line a 20cm (8 inch) square baking tin.
- Mix together the pecans, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg in a small bowl.
- Using an electric mixer, whisk the eggs until creamy and light. Add the caster sugar, two spoons at a time, whisking until the mixture is thick and billowy. Add the oil in a steady stream, followed by the vanilla and whisk until just combined. Add the matzo meal and mix on low speed until just combined.
- Pour half the batter into the prepared tin.
- Sprinkle with half the pecan mixture and arrange half the sliced pears on top.
- Pour over the remaining batter, smoothing the top with a spatula. Top with the remaining pears, followed by the remaining pecan mixture.
- Bake for 60 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
- Transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool completely before removing from the tin.
Recipe by Leah Koenig from Modern Jewish Cooking, Chronicle Books, 2015. Extracted from Monday Morning Cooking Club: Now For Something Sweet published by HarperCollins, priced £25 (hardback)
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