Pear and ginger pudding

Regular readers will know that we live in a fruit growing area, the owner of the orchards that surround our house is one of the U.K.'s top producers of Bramley apples.

This year's crop

All over the area are remnants of older orchards and many people have a few old fruit trees in their gardens, including fellow dog walker Graham. Last week he came round with a carrier bag full of pears. To me pears are a contrary fruit, you pick them before they ripen but before you know it they're soft and squidgy. This bag was on it's way to over ripe but I couldn't let them go to waste.

Pear bounty

I had a vague memory of a pear pudding recipe that I had tucked away, and having found it decided it was perfect. I made one pudding to the quantities below and then doubled up to make a giant one which I cut into sections and froze.

Pear & ginger pudding

 4/5 small pears, peeled, halved & cored
100g butter
100g light muscavado sugar
100g black treacle
125ml whole milk
140g plain flour
1 level tsp, ground ginger
1/2 tsp. crushed cardamom seeds
1 level.tsp. bicarbonate of soda
1 medium egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 150C (130C fan).

Grease an 18cm square cake tin and line the base with parchment. Arrange the pears cut side down.

Melt the butter, sugar and treacle over a low heat until the sugar is dissolved. Stir in the milk and set aside to cool for a bit.

Sift all the dry ingredients together and then quickly beat into the butter mixture making sure there are no pockets of flour. Add the egg.

Pour over the pears and bake for about an hour, you may need to cover with parchment at some point.

Seve warm with cream or custard.

Pear & ginger pudding

 

No not Andrew being greedy! a slice for two for freezing

Question for anyone - is black treacle available in France?