Upside down Pear and Almond cake

This glorious, moist pudding cake was adapted from 'Saved By Cake', which was given to me by the lovely blogger Helen last year... The book is by Marian Keyes, who you may be more familiar as a popular fiction writer, however this book came about following Marian's battle with depression, and how she learned to bake and get on the road to recovery. 

Depression, afflicts a lot of us at points during our lives, and it took me a long time to realise I actually was under its grey thumb, thinking I was just a little ‘off colour’ following some pretty life changing events, and I was not realising how much it was affecting both me and those around me. Thankfully I sought help, spurred on by Helens enlightening post about her own challenge with it and my life is considerably better now for it and life is looking up again. I urge anyone suffering from this horrible illness to seek help of their doctor and don't be afraid to speak to your friends and family even when all you want to do is batten down the hatches and hide!

The original recipe was for a mango upside down cake, however I make a pretty mean version myself but this recipe was different enough and as I had some pears that had become very ripe after buying far too much fruit after a small spending spree in Aldi’s super six – honestly forget I only buy for one sometimes, and knowing from a previous experiment with some lush almond extract, I knew how well the flavours marry together so well, and thus the cake was born! 

Topping:
2 ripe pears, peeled cored and sliced into 1/4cm slices
50g butter
50g light muscovado sugar

Cake
100g butter
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
100g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 180o/ gas4

Liberally grease a 20cm cake pan – don’t use a loose bottom one or it will leak (apparently so anyway!). I can definitely assume this would happen! I used my sealed bottom tin and a cake liner to doubly ensure no leakages!

For the topping beat the butter and sugar and spread over the base of the pan, top with the pear slices in an even fashion.

Cream the butter and sugar together, add the eggs and a ¼ tsp almond extract (mine is from Bakery Bits and pretty intense so judge your own accordingly). Fold in the sieved flour and baking powder

Spoon over the pears evenly and bake for approx. 35 minutes, cool slightly for 5 minutes in the tin and turn quickly and carefully onto a suitable pretty cake plate. Serve warm with custard or cream

Unfortunately my camera was out on loan, and my old camera just doesn't do it justice - it was a lot more photogenic than the image suggests!