recipe:: pear almond cake

Kirstin was wanting to do something with the over-ripe pears we had in the house last week and so I was looking up an oat-y pear cobbler. Kirstin wanted a cake and I happened to stumble upon this AMAZING recipe from New York Times. Most NY Times recipes you can count on, and seeing that this one was from a 1983 THE SUCCESSFUL DINNER PARTY: A GAME PLAN, we knew it was golden, and it was. The lemon-almond flavor in this cake leaves your taste buds guessing what the wonderful thing is that you are eating. As Nate Schroader said, "I don't know what to think of it!"
I will definitely be making this cake again, I only got one slice because it didn't even last twenty-four hours. I even won't be changing the recipe.

Pear Almond Cake

Ingredients

2 pounds ripe pears, peeled, cored and sliced

1 lemon

10 tablespoons butter at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1/2 cup sliced almonds (we used slivered almonds)

1 cup heavy cream, whipped

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Butter and flour 9-inch springform cake pan.

3. Toss pears with juice of half a lemon and set aside.

4. Cream 8 tablespoons of butter with 3/4 cup of sugar. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together and add to batter, stirring lightly. Add remaining lemon juice and almond extract.

5. Spread batter in prepared pan and cover with sliced pears, arranging decoratively if you wish. Dot with 1 tablespoon of remaining butter. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sugar and scatter almonds on top. Sprinkle with remaining sugar and dot with remaining butter. Bake for 1 hour (we baked it for about 48 minutes until we saw that the sides were getting rather dark). Allow to cool slightly before removing sides of pan. Serve at room temperature with whipped cream.

YIELD 6 - 8 servings