Spicy Pear Cake Goodness

This afternoon I was wandering around craft and sewing blogs and wandered onto this post at All Buttoned Up. I don't know this blogger but have followed links and ended up at her blog several times, enjoying her sewing projects and adoption posts. (Her kids are ADORABLE!)

So, when I saw the pear cake post, I had to try it with a couple languishing Bartlett pears I had in the fridge.

I wish we had "smellovision" or some such thing because this is just heavenly! I adapted All Buttoned Up's recipe to fit our family's eating habits. I used fresh ground flour, healthier sweetener and Allspice (I LOVE Allspice!!!) because we have family who are allergic to nutmeg, so I just have never had it in the house. Shhh! Don't tell anyone it's whole wheat, they'll truly never know! Thank you All Buttoned Up, this is going into the family cookbook as a regular! :o)

Spicy Pear Cake a la All Buttoned Up

In medium mixing bowl, combine:

2 c (280 grams) fresh ground soft white wheat (whole wheat pastry flour)

3/4 t Baking Powder

3/4 t Baking Soda

1/2 t Salt

2/3 c Turbinado (I may try Sucanat next time as it's less processed)

1/2 t Allspice

1/2 t Cinnamon

In a second bowl, mix:

1/2 c oil (I used EVOO)

1 egg

1/2 c yogurt

1/3 c raw honey

2 small pears, diced.

Once the wet ingredients are mixed, add to dry ingredients and mix gently. Spray 8x8 pan, pouring mix in. Bake at 350* for 30-40 minutes. (I used a glass pan and next time I will probably use either a metal pan or turn the oven down and cook a little longer. It developed a little bit more of a crust than I would want if I was serving it to company - but, I didn't want it to be raw in the center). This could be done with apples, easily or All Buttoned Up suggested using peaches and using ginger instead of the nutmeg! NUMMY! I may have to try that one next!

If you try this, I'd love to know how it went.

Tammy's Strawberry Shortcake

Since Christmas 2007 I have only used white flour one time and that was recently to make some half wheat/half white tortillas. The reason we did that is that we have not found a ww tortilla recipe yet that will remain pliable and not be shoe leather to make enchiladas and burritos to freeze. I'm still working on that one.

Our adventures in whole grains for cooking have been mostly a success though, including desserts. Awhile back I had printed out Tammy's Whole Wheat Strawberry Shortcake recipe and had planned on making it July 4th. Well, we were a day late but it was good.

Because I had flour left over from making spelt bread, I made it with spelt. Spelt is sometimes a little tricky to substitute straight across as it generally does not tolerate as much mixing/kneading and requires less liquid than wheat. However, it has a delightful taste and is not quite as bitter as wheat sometimes can be. I ground the flour fine in my Nutrimill and used 150 grams for the one cup, which is the weight I was told to use for fresh ground wheat per cup, so I don't know if this is accurate. You can see that it looks nice.

I found it needed a little less time to cook in my oven. So I had to use a long serrated knife to cut off some of the bottom. This tasted a little like 'Nilla Wafers and my son ate it with some chocolate syrup on it! Ick! :o) I used two layer cake pans, but would probably consider using one cake pan and cutting it in half next time. I wasn't sure how much it would rise in the pan, having never made it before and did not want to have a Mt. Vesuvius disaster in my oven! LOL

The secret to the light texture of this, was beating the egg whites stiff. This was the first time I have used the plastic bowl and whips that came with my DLX mixer and it worked extremely well. The whites were very stiff and looked like stiff whipped cream! They are folded into the rest of the mix, which makes a foamy batter. The texture of the short cake is not like angel food or the fake chemical shortcakes you find packaged in the produce section with the strawberries. It was somewhere between that and a biscuit, more like a coarse cake. There was a faint vanilla flavor but it was mostly neutral so you could enjoy the whipped cream in the layer and on top, as well as the strawberries.

I highly recommend organic strawberries as I have read several places that strawberries can be washed 12 times and still have unacceptable levels of pesticide on them!

Here is a slice. The kids wanted it with chocolate sauce. We have been buying an organic chocolate syrup from Trader Joe's and they love it. Hubby and I did not like it with the chocolate and felt it interfered with the loveliness of the berries. In the future I would like to make this with mixed berries but the cost was prohibitive this time. I think it would taste great with raspberries, blueberries and blackberries along with the strawberries. If you want to be decadent, perhaps a little more whipped cream. I used 1 cup of heavy cream to whip and it was just right to get a great taste without going over the top!

Oh, what I forgot to say is that you could feed this to skeptics. My Hubby said he would not have known it was made with spelt if I had not told him! And though he has been a good sport in all our nutrition changes, he is much more picky about the taste and texture than I am, so I think this is an accurate statement. Let me know if you try it!

Baking Bonanza

Today was a "baking bonanza" day. I made a double batch of the whole wheat bread from Beth Holland's Bread For Life cookbook that I have been making weekly for our sandwich bread. I have been using white hard wheat and a double batch generally gives me 2 - 2.25# loaves and 3 - 1.5# loaves (12" and 8" pans accordingly).

This time I did it a little differently. I made a dozen 4 oz hamburger buns, pictured above. Next time I may make them 3 oz. It seems like an awful lot of bread to be eating at once. I make make them the same diameter but not as thick next time. Any input?


Here they are in a 9x13 pan, ready to rise. I used 1.5#, the same for a medium loaf of bread, as the recipe did not say. For the filling, I used about 1 cup of Sucanat, 1/2 cup of Honey and 1 cup of Turbinado. I find mixing natural sugars works better in most recipes. Then I melted two sticks of butter (1 cup) and 2 t of cinnamon. Chopped pecans were added on the bottom of the pan. These were actually sticky buns, not cinnamon rolls. The recipe would work for either, but you wouldn't need as much butter and sugar.


I spread about a third of the mix on the dough that was rolled out and the other 2/3 was on the bottom of the pan. I rolled the dough tightly and cut 14 1/2 rolls out using dental floss, which works like a charm! This is what they look like coming out of the oven. You can see why the Germans call them Schnecken! (Snails)

And this is the yummy result. I ate it this afternoon... you know the cook has to try out the experiments before letting others eat, right?! LOL

In addition to hamburger buns and sticky buns, I still had dough for a 12" loaf and an 8" loaf. Then there was exactly enough fresh ground flour to make Hubby his newly favorite cookies.

I can't believe it has been almost a month since I posted. I'll have to update with my bagel experiments soon!