Monday 2 November 2015

Pears

We've had a couple of days of fog, it has been floating past the windows and hanging in the trees like smoke, virtually the whole country is blanketed under the stuff. This afternoon the mist rolled away for a short while so I went out with my camera. The farrier has put his goats on the overgrown bank beside the footpath, they are friendly little animals and are doing a good job of clearing the slope.
Perhaps the stag thought that the mist would hide him.
The fallen leaves have lost their crispness now
and are forming a soft mash and meld of colour under my boots.

Just the right sort of weather for fungi.
The damp air seeps into me.

It's good to get back to the warmth of the kitchen.
We picked our crop of pears a couple of weeks ago when they were still hard and put most of them in the cool so that they would ripen slowly. A basket was put in the kitchen to be ready earlier. That was the theory! But it would seem that pears don't do as they're told, they're not as accommodating as apples, pears always ripen at the same time whatever I try and once ripe they soon spoil. I made a tray bake but it didn't use as many fruits as I would have liked, I should have crammed them over the entire surface.
It's a fat-free recipe.
INGREDIENTS
8oz self-raising flour
3oz soft light-brown sugar
2oz semolina
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons clear honey
2 tablespoons malt extract
4 tablespoons milk
4 tablespoons sunflower oil
teaspoon vanilla essence
2 eggs.

Sift together flour, sugar, cocoa powder and semolina. Separate eggs and whisk whites until stiff.Add egg yolks and other ingredients to the flour mixture and combine until smooth. Fold in the egg whites and pour into a 7x11inch greased baking tray. Add pear slices and cook at 325F for half an hour.
Once the cake has cooled sprinkle with icing sugar. It will melt on the moist pears but stay on the cake.
Enjoy!



17 comments:

  1. As I'm reading this post I can hear Debussy's L'apres-midi d'un faune playing in the background. Just lovely.

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    1. That's no faun, those antlers would make a quite different sound!

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  2. Wonderful photos and I love the goats and the Stag is so beautiful.
    When I lived in Laguna Beach the City hired goats for the summer to eat the weeds and old growth to help keep the wildfires away from the homes.
    They had several kinds that only eat certain plants. They were so cute. The eyes are beautiful.

    cheers, parsnip

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    1. I'm rather fond of goats, my family kept one to supply milk when I was an infant during the war.
      The stag looked rather fairytale emerging from the mist!

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  5. So pretty that stag behind the trees, he certainly was not aware being watched and photographed.
    The recipe for this pear cake sounds delicious. Always the same with storage of pears, I tried already all kind of things over the years but the end is that they all are ripe at the same time.

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    1. We are eating a great many pears at the moment and I am getting rather fed up with them! A big bake planned for tomorrow to use up some more.

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  6. The photo of the stag is beautiful. We have had similar weather today. Oh, I love pears. I've missed making pear butter this year. I hope you are having a lovely autumn. Hugs!

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  7. I did enjoy! Thank you. (The stag, the goats, the thought of pears...)

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    1. Too wet and wild to walk today. Don't mention pears - I've eaten my fill!

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  8. I did enjoy! Thank you. (The stag, the goats, the thought of pears...)

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  9. Thanks for taking us along on your walk through woods. The stag looks shy, but curious. Your pear tray bake looks delicious!

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    1. Hello Lorrie, the addition semolina to the recipe just gives a nice bit of crunch. It would be nice to eat with a dollop of whipped cream but I'm trying to lose a few pounds before Christmas. (When I shall put them all back on again!)

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