What can be wrong with it? – Spicy chocolate cake with pear

This post is about a chocolate cake, so there can’t be much wrong with it, eh? Especially as we are digging deeper into the cold season…

The base of this cake comes from Izy. You don’t know her blog “Top with cinnamon” yet? Jump over and be convinced by her recipes, pictures and words. Since she has just released her first cookbook, her recipes are spreading the food blog scene recently and her version of a Swedish chocolate cake seams to be especially popular … it’s a chocolate cake, so there can’t be much wrong with it!

Anyway I created my own autumn-winter edition adding warming spices and juicy pear to the chocolate … That’s what you – or at least I – want right now!

I made one other major change that still puzzles me a bit … Am I the only one who finds 350 g of sugar a whole lot for roughly 100 g of flour? I more than halfened the amount … and still it is definitely sweet enough.
A note about texture: I like my chocolate cake gooey, but no too molten. If you’re tending towards a really muddy core, bake your cake for only 20 minutes to achieve your desired result.

 

Spicy chocolate cake with pear (∅ 20 cm baking pan)

ingredients
130 g butter, 120 g flour, 55 g cocoa powder, 150 g sugar, 3 eggs, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon ground ginger, 2 cloves, 4 allspice berries, 1 sweet pear (my favourite sorts are Abate Fetel and Williams Christ)

preparation
Preheat oven to 180°C. Melt butter in a medium saucepan. Meanwhile mortar cloves and allspice. Remove butter from heat and stir in flour, cocoa powder, sugar, eggs and spices until completely combined. Wash pear. Halfen, peel and remove core. Cut into quarters and then into thin slices. Pour cake batter into a prepared cake pan, arrange pears sticking them into the batter vertically and bake for 20-30 minutes (see notes above). Let cake cool in the pan for about 20 minutes, transfer to a wire rack and let cool out. Optionally dust with icing sugar. Serve warm or cold, with a dollop of whipped cream or without.

Interested in some more swedish fika recipes? Visit “Holunderweg 18” or try these kardemummabullar.