You don’t get to taste a cake every day that consists in almost equal parts of fruit, nuts, and sweet dough. The following recipe provides proof that such a cake is something special! And what’s more, this insanely delicious pear-walnut cake has a secret ingredient that hardly any Romanian dessert would want to omit: Rum.
Equipment
You’ll need a 24 cm (9.5 inches) or a 26 cm (10 inches) springform pan
Ingredients
Batter
200gvegan butter
125gsugar
1smallvery ripe banana
4tablespoonsof oat milk
1tablespoonrum or cognacalternatively ½ teaspoon rum flavoring
Grated zest of 1 small lemon
300gflour
1pinchof salt
1teaspoonbaking powder
¼teaspoonvanilla powder
Topping
1kgpearsor 500 g pears and 500 g apples
200gwalnutscoarsely chopped
2tablespoonssugar
Decoration
Icing sugar
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 175° C (350° F) top and bottom heat.
For the topping, wash the pears, quarter them, remove the core and cut the pear quarters into thin slices. If you are also using apples, wash them, peel them, quarter them, remove the core and dice the apple quarters.
For the batter, beat the vegan butter with sugar until fluffy.
Peel the banana and mash it to a pulp with a fork, then add the pulp to the butter.
Add the oat milk, the rum (or cognac, or rum flavoring), and the grated lemon zest to the banana-butter mixture.
Mix the flour with salt, baking powder, and vanilla powder, then stir these dry ingredients into the butter mixture (from the previous step).
Grease the springform pan or line it with baking paper.
Spoon half of the batter onto the springform pan bottom. (It might seem like it's too little batter, but don't let that fool you, the batter-fruit-walnuts ratio will be perfect).
Spread the pear slices (and apple cubes, if you're using apples as well) on top of the batter.
Spread the walnuts over the fruit and sprinkle with 2 tablespoons of sugars.
Spoon the second half of the batter over the fruit and the walnuts and spread it lightly. It is okay if the walnuts are not covered completely with batter.
Bake the cake in the oven on the bottom rack for about 50 minutes, until the cake is golden brown.
Let the cake cool and sprinkle with powdered sugar to your liking.