Chocolate Pear Cake

Sorry folks for the delay in posting! To make up for it, here's the recipe for that succulent looking chocolate pear cake that I posted in our Thanksgiving post. This cake is a fantastic marriage of luxurious, velvety chocolate and melt in your mouth fresh autumn pears. By incorporating this fall flavour with the sophistication of dark chocolate you can manage to bring a little class to your Autumn feast! So without further ado...

Cake (Adapted from my friend Jaana's recipe)
Ingredients:
-3c.+3 tsbp. milk
-1/3c. cocoa
-1 1/2c. butter
-3 eggs
-2 1/2c. brown sugar
-1/2 tsp. salt
-3 tsp. vanilla
-1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
-3c. flour
-3tsp. baking soda

For the ganache:
-250g. Dark Chocolate (I used 72% Swiss)
-~1/2 c. 10% coffee cream

For the filling:
4c. of pears, peeled and cored

1) Grease 2 round 8 inch cake pans, preheat oven to 350 degrees
2) Heat 3c. milk with cocoa, at low heat, whisking until well mixed, remove from heat, let cool
3) Combine flour, salt and baking powder, in a separate bowl beat butter and sugar together, add eggs and vanilla
4)Mix dry ingredients, cocoa liquid and egg mix, with a mixer, combine until homogenous
5)In a separate container mix baking powder and remaining milk, make sure it doesn't clump, add it to the batter, pour into moulds, bake for 30-40 minutes
6) Prepare the pears, peeling, coring and then add to a pot, heat on medium heat stirring and mashing until they are a thick puree, if they are sticking too much add some butter and keep mixing. Set  mixture aside to cool
7)One the cake has been ejected from its pan and it, along with the pear mix, has cooled begin to work on the ganache, melting the dark chocolate in 1/4c. of the cream adding 1-2 tbsp. as needed
8)Set up one layer of cake, apply a layer of ganache on top of it and let cool. Once it has cooled layer pears on top followed by more cake* repeat the process on the top layer, putting down ganache and pear mixture.
9) Coat the sides of the cake with a thin layer of ganache. By this point, you should be left with some ganache and some cream**melt down the rest of the ganache with the cream to make a thinner, lighter liquid, this is what you can use to drizzle a decorative motif along the top of the cake, be original!

Tadaa! A lovely cake, as usual, feel free to decorate as you please!

 

Many thanks to Cody again for the fantastic pictures!

*if you make additional ganache and pear and split the cake into thinner rounds using dental floss or a knife you can add more layers, this is a great cake for layering as you'll see in a later recipe!
** if you were too generous, don't worry just melt down another 50g of chocolate or so with the remaining cream