Last week we had Friday night dinner at my mum’s house and as she was making meat I wanted a dairy free pudding to take with. Have you seen the pears that are in season at the moment? I don’t normally reach for pears when I want a fruit snack but Tim sliced some up after dinner a few nights ago and they were so good I now can’t leave them alone!

So that made it really easy to choose what I wanted to bake for pudding. I made this pear and almond cake. It’s quick and easy to make but as I did it when we’d just got back from school the kids where a little tired and hyper (not a good combination) and as we had my nephew home too I wasn’t properly concentrating when I was doing the baking. Sometimes when things go a bit wrong you discover a whole new technique. I forgot to only use some of the oil and sugar to coat the pears and used the whole lot. I had to scrape it all off and re layer the pears, but the up side is that there was a lot more sugar on them than I originally intended there to be, but the outcome was amazing! So, it just goes to show you can mess up to a good end!

Pear and Almond pudding

Ingredients

4 pears
125ml sunflower oil
180g brown sugar
2 eggs- beaten
130g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp Almond essence or extract

Line an 8″ baking tin with greaseproof paper and pre heat your oven to 180ºC (Fan oven160ºC)
Cut the pears in half and remove the stalks and cores. Place them face down in the baking tin.
Mix the oil and sugar together in a bowl and take a quarter of the mix and brush it over the pears. It will be quite thick and bumpy – don’t worry. Set to one side.
In another bowl mix all the other ingredients. Add the remainder of the sugar and oil mix then pour the whole mix over the pears.
Bake in the middle of the oven for 25-30 minutes or until the pudding is golden brown on the top. A skewer inserted into the middle will come out clean.
Leave to cool on a wire rack until ready to upturn onto a plate to serve.
Tastes best warm served with some dairy free soya ice cream.