Russian Season

Last week we bought some incredibly soft and sweet autumn pears, and Mom immediately came up with the idea of a Pear and Cream Cake. We used frozen puff pastry – or you might prefer to make your own at home, which means you are a very patient person :) I easily come to a compromise between the store-bought and the home-made when it comes to puff pastry. They sell some really good-quality pastry in a nearby supermarket, and it makes life so much easier! Isn’t a home-made croissant or turnover made with frozen puff pastry still better than having sandwiches for lunch again?!

Anyways, we laid those sugary-simmered pears on a sheet of pastry, topped them with whipped egg and cream, sprinkled the cake with almond shavings, put it into oven and waited for 45 minutes, enjoying the warm smells of melting cream, vanilla, and baking pastry. The cake came out tender and sweet, with a very mild citrus flavour and a dreamy touch of vanilla. We let it cool until room temperature, so it became easy to cut. You might as well try serving it warm with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

Ingredients

½ kg puff pastry
6 pears
½ cup + 4 tsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla sugar
1 egg, yolk and white separated
100 ml cream, chilled
½ lemon
3 tbsp almond shavings

Makes a 30×23 cm cake

Cut the pears into slices, unpeeled. Place them into a small saucepan, add ½ cup sugar and freshly squeezed juice of ½ lemon, and simmer under a lid for about 10 minutes, until softer than raw, yet not fully cooked. Remove all extra liquid from the pears. You will only need the pear slices for the cake because you don’t want too much liquid syrup in it.

Whip the cream with 2 tsp sugar and 1 tsp vanilla sugar.
Whip the egg yolk and white separately, adding 1 tsp sugar to each.

Bring together whipped cream, egg yolk and egg white, and stir.

Roll out the pastry and lay it into a baking pan (ours was 30×23 cm in size).

Spread simmered pears all over the pastry base, top them with the whipped cream&egg, and scatter almond shavings all over the cake.

Bake over a low heat for 40-45 minutes. Let cool before serving and enjoy!