Vegan Baking: Ginger Pear Cake

This is my second baking of this cake in two days.  The first one, while delicious, didn't come out pretty.  The batter was too wet and it was baked in the wrong size pan.  The flavoring was also more of a spice cake and less gingery.  However, it was delicious, and almost instantly disappeared.  This one is just as tasty, better textured, and the right size.  If you're not a fan of ginger, you can replace it with other spices, or just increase the amount of vanilla you use.

Ginger Pear Cake

Ingredients

2 cups whole wheat flour

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 ounces (6 tablespoons) olive oil

3/4 cup room temperature water

1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger (or 1/2 teaspoon ground dried ginger)

1 ounce (2 tablespoons) clementine or orange juice

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 asian pear (sometimes sold as apple pears)

Heat your oven to 350 degrees.  In the bowl of a food processor, add flour and sugar and process for approximately 2 minutes to lighten the texture of the flour and make the sugar crystals finer.  Move the mixture into a medium sized mixing bowl.

To prep your pear, finely dice 1/2 of the pear and slice the other half very thin for layering in the bottom of your pan.  Line the bottom of a spring form pan with wax or parchment paper.  (Either lightly grease the bottom and then fit the round, or use the pan's mechanism to hold the paper in place, as I did.)  Arrange the pear slices on the bottom of the pan in a spiral shape or other pattern.

Once the pan is prepped, add the baking soda, salt, and ginger to the prepared flour and sugar mixture.  Use a whisk to evenly mix together the ingredients.  Add the water, vanilla, orange juice, and oil and mix to combine.  Using a rubber spatula, fold in the diced pears.  Add the batter to the prepared pan carefully to keep from moving the pear slices around and smooth out the top.  Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until a tooth pick inserted in the center comes out clean.  When baked, place the pan on a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes.  Then flip the pan onto a large serving plate and release the spring mechanism carefully.  Remove the bottom of the pan and the paper from the cake.  Allow it to cool for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

 

As you can see, the texture of the crumb on this cake is pretty fine.  This evenness is a result of the food processing that the flour sugar underwent.  To skip this step, you can use whole wheat pastry flour and superfine or caster sugar.  As you can see, this recipe is devoid of any white or all purpose flour, and this change allows for that omission.