Honey-Glazed Pear Upside-Down Cake
- Total Time
- 1 hour 30 minutes
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- ¼cup chestnut or other intense honey
- 4small or 3 large Bosc pears, peeled, quartered lengthwise and cored
- 3sprigs fresh thyme (optional)
- 1cup sugar
- Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
- 2large eggs
- 1tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1cup all-purpose flour
- ¼teaspoon salt
- ½cup (1 stick) plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- ¼cup sliced almonds
Nutritional analysis per serving (8 servings)
417 calories; 16 grams fat; 9 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 5 grams monounsaturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 65 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 46 grams sugars; 5 grams protein; 95 milligrams sodium
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
- Step 1
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a 9-inch ovenproof skillet (not nonstick), simmer honey until it begins to reduce, caramelize and darken in color, 6 to 10 minutes. Do not let honey burn; if it starts to smell burned, turn off heat.
- Step 2
Arrange pears, close together and cut-side up, in a circular pattern in skillet, stem ends pointing toward center. Simmer over medium heat, turning them from one cut side to the other, until they begin to turn golden, about 10 minutes.
- Step 3
Flip pears over to cut-side down and scatter with thyme sprigs if using. Transfer skillet to oven and roast, uncovered, until very tender, about 25 minutes.
- Step 4
Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together sugar and lemon zest. Whisk in eggs and vanilla. Fold in flour and salt; stir in ½ cup butter.
- Step 5
When pears are soft, remove skillet from oven, discard thyme sprigs and brush edges of pears with remaining 1 tablespoon melted butter. Pour batter on roasted pears and scatter almonds over batter. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Let cake cool for 30 minutes in pan. Run an offset spatula along edges of pan to loosen cake; carefully invert cake onto a serving platter. Serve warm or cooled.
Private Notes
Comments
you don't need to do all this simmering and pre cooking of the pears! you will end up with pear mush. Just place your pears over the honey glaze in an attractive pattern, pour over the batter and bake. Delicious.
Delicious cake. We went with halved pears (much easier to turn)and we loved the way they looked. Only problem with the recipe is the instruction to let the cake cool for 30 minutes before turning it out of the pan. Because of a fear that the caramel-like honey/pear juice in the bottom of the pan would solidify, we turned it out almost immediately and it was perfect. The thyme (we used fresh- picked lemon thyme) was a brilliant addition.
I make this with some frequency. Sometimes I go with brown sugar and butter instead of honey because honey taste is too overwhelming for me. Like but not LOVE honey. I often have trouble getting this cake to release from the pan, so I have started to do this in my cast iron skillet lined with a sheet of parchment large enough to come over the top of the skillet. Then I can easily lift it out, set it on a plate and flip it.
This was a disaster for me. The cake batter was rather thick and I had my doubts before popping it in the oven. The recipe seems to suggest that you need to pour the batter in the same pan the pears are cooked in and throw it in the oven which is wrong. The pears clearly need to be transferred to an actual round cake pan that you will use to bake the cake. The honey was also overwhelming considering we are reducing it on the stove before further caramelizing in the oven. I did not understand these steps. End result was a bubbly bread-like cake with pears that were mushy on the top and not fully cooked underneath. The pear's moisture seeped into the cooked cake and made it mushy. Overall this was a failure.
This was SO GOOD! Followed a lot of suggestions in the comments - cut the pears in half instead of quarters, used some honey and sugar in the first step (didn’t cook as long as directions), cooked the pears in the sugar just a bit before the oven (rather than the full 10), cut the sugar in the batter to 3/4 and didn’t miss it, and added a bit of baking powder and soda to the batter. Very balanced.
Waited just 10 minutes for cake to set - came out of the cast iron pan easy!