Pear, ginger and hazelnut cake with maple cream cheese frosting. Jump to Recipe
I recently realised that although there are plenty of stacked up celebration cakes around here (this lemon, almond & raspberry cake, this chocolate hazelnut cake and this rhubarb, caramel & pistachio cake are a few of your favourites), there are fewer options for those erring on the side of simplicity. As much as I love sky high cakes as an opportunity to pull out the stops, the majority of the time a single layer is what I choose. Maybe frosted, maybe dusted with icing sugar – the kind of cake you make on a slow Saturday morning, or for when friends are stopping by. To take to work, to use up those pears ripening on the counter, or just because you feel like it. This is one of those cakes: a pear, ginger & hazelnut cake with maple frosting. I couldn’t help myself with the embellishments – salted caramel drizzle, toasted hazelnuts and dried pear – but you could equally give it a simple dusting of icing sugar and call it a day.
It’s a cake that required more than a few tests (and significant oven frustration) to reach what I envisaged – dark, caramelised and richly spiced with fresh ginger and cardamom. Toasted hazelnuts are ground to a slightly chunky meal, and, along with the olive oil, keep it moist, nutty and give texture. Full of fresh pear chunks, it’s got satisfying height. It’s also not a super sweet cake, but that’s balanced by the tangy maple cream cheese frosting. Dark brown sugar is crucial and definitely worth seeking out (it’s stocked in most supermarkets). Would love to hear what you think!
Baker’s notes
- Seek out dark brown sugar if you can – it’s crucial to the dark, caramelised interior.
- To decorate, I used dried pear, chopped hazelnuts and a half batch of the salted caramel recipe here. Leftover caramel freezes well for future cakes or desserts. Dried pear can be found at specialty bulk food stores in Australia.
- 150 g hazelnuts
- 80 g wholewheat/wholemeal flour
- 160 g plain flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg optional
- 180 g dark brown sugar
- 100 g caster sugar
- 250 ml olive oil (200g)
- 3 eggs room temperature
- 2 tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger
- 3 ripe pears peeled and diced (450-500g)
- 250 g full fat cream cheese (philadelphia block) room temperature
- 65 g unsalted butter room temperature
- 50 g icing sugar sifted (1/3 cup)
- 1-2 tablespoons maple syrup
- pinch sea salt
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Grease and line a 22-23cm cake tin, and preheat the oven to 170°C
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Toast the hazelnuts in the oven for 5-10 minutes until fragrant, golden and the skins are coming loose. Leave to cool slightly, then rub off most of the skins and grind to a fine meal in a food processor or blender (it’s ok if there are still a few slightly bigger bits left)
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Combine the ground hazelnuts in a bowl with the flours, spices, baking soda and salt.
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Whisk together the dark brown sugar, caster sugar and olive oil until combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, until fully combined. Add the fresh ginger and whisk to combine.
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Add the dry ingredients and fold in to just combine. Add the pear and fold in to combine.
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Pour into the prepared cake tin.
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Bake for 50min – 1hr until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.
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Leave to cool completely.
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Combine the room temperature cream cheese and butter in a bowl of a stand mixer and beat with the paddle attachment until smooth and creamy.
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Add the sifted icing sugar, maple syrup and salt and beat to combine. Taste and adjust maple syrup and salt if needed.
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Spread onto the cooled cake and decorate as you like – I made some salted caramel (I made a half batch of the recipe here, and leftovers freeze very well) and used chopped hazelnuts and dried pear (available from specialty bulk food stores)
This is one of my all-time favourite cakes. The hazelnut flavour is beautiful together with the ginger and spices. I think I slightly underbaked my cake, but I loved the textural contrast between tenser outer edges and moist centre.
Thanks Angela, that is amazing to hear! I found it was sometimes tricky too to tell whether it was fully cooked in the centre – glad it worked out ok. Thanks for letting me know x