Saturday, December 12, 2009

Double-Layered Pear Coffee Cake


You know how they have lazy cabbage rolls? This could be dubbed lazy cinnamon rolls! Cause that's the taste flavor happening here. So quick, so easy, so good! What a great way to use up canned fruits that are not too tasty on their own which pretty well describes the pears that I bought back in September. On top of being not so tasty they were also rather hard so I threw them in the freezer hoping for something good to do with them one day. So yesterday when I was searching through my freezer I spotted them and thought these have to get out of here one way or another! Another way turned out to be this seriously addictive, double-layered, pear coffee cake. So tasty I might just have to go buy some more crappy canned fruit -- I'm sure almost any kind would do here. I'm thinking peaches would be divine. Maybe if we lived in sunny California we wouldn't have to resort to disguising fruits with flour and sugar but unfortunately not only do I have issues with most of the canned fruits but alas, also most of the "fresh" fruits available for purchase in our supermarkets. Anyhow, one piece of this pear cofee cake, warm and fresh out of the oven, will help you forget most of your issues. Heel lekker! (dutch for: very tasty).

Recipe
3/4 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons flour, all-purpose
3 tablespoons margarine (hard)
1 teaspoon frontier organic cinnamon

1/2 cup organic granulated sugar
1/4 cup margarine
4 tablespoons *flaxseed mixture*
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup soy milk

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 c. canned pears,
drained & thinly slicedBlend brown sugar, margarine and cinnamon in a bowl. Cut in cold, hard margarine in small pieces. Blend thoroughly -- easiest way is to rub it through your fingers several times till mixed well. Set aside.

Combine sugar, margarine (out of necessity, I used 2 tablespoons soft style margarine and 2 tablespoons hard though I think either type of margarine would be fine in this application) and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Cream for one minute. Add the 4 tablespoons flaxseed mixture and whip at medium high speed until fluffy. About 1-2 minutes. Stir in the soymilk.

Sift 1-1/2 c flour,baking powder and salt into a bowl. Stir into your creamed mixture and mix only as much as required to blend the two together.

Spread 1/2 the batter in a greased 9 inch square pan. Batter is a bit stiff and might be a little difficult to spread - if it is -- just spray the back of a spoon with pam and use that to spread it out -- it will be much easier.

Cover with 1/2 the pears and top with slightly less than 1/2 of the brown sugar mixture.

Repeat layers.

Bake at 375 degrees F. for 45 minutes. (glass pan)

*flaxseed mixture -- since I've been doing a fair amount of baking this past week I decided to make up my "eggy" flaxseed mixture to keep on hand in the fridge. Easier than making it up fresh each time you need it. I stirred about 6 heaping tablespoons of golden ground flaxseed into 1-1/2 cups water, whipped it a bit with a fork and put it in the fridge. You can use a blender but fork method worked just fine for me. Should have approximately the consistency of egg whites. Store in the fridge for 3 days. I used 4 tablespoons of this liquid (stir each time before using) to substitute for one egg.*

2 comments:

  1. Heel lekker, indeed. This looks too good to be true.

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  2. Thank you! It was surprising to me too that it all worked out so well. I wasn't even sure that thawed frozen pears would work but it worked like magic! I'll be freezing some more pears for sure. Fresh out of the oven -- this one is a perfect 10 for me! I'm sure reheating in microwave, briefly, the next day would still rate 9/10 :)

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