Pear Almond Bundt Cake

When I was a little kid, I used to have an apple tree in my backyard that was always loaded with apples in the late summer/fall.  I used to make all kinds of things to use the apples, and I changed this apple cake recipe so many times to improve on it.  This the first time I ever made variations on a recipe and made it my own.  

It happened by accident, but one batch of apples I picked one year happened to be pretty tart, so I put half of the sugar in with the apples and let them soak until it was time to add them.  What I discovered was that the sugar drew out a lot of the juices from the apples and made the cake super moist.  A few years ago I tried it with pears instead of apples, and almonds instead of walnuts.  Both was are delicious!

Ingredients:

3 pears, peeled, cored, and cut into chunks

2 cups sugar

1 1/2 baking powder

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. salt

2 cups flour

2 eggs

1/2 cup oil

2 tsp. almond extract

3 oz. slivered almonds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Pour 1 cup of sugar over the pears.  Stir.  Set aside.

Mix together the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt.

In another bowl, lightly beat the eggs.  Add remaining sugar, oil, and almond extract.

Slowly add the flour to the wet ingredients.  Mix until well incorporated.  

Add pears and most of the almonds to the batter and mix together.  (Save a small amount of almonds for the top of the cake, a few tablespoons).

Grease and flour a bunt pan.  Sprinkle the remaining almonds at the bottom of the pan.

Bake for about 1 hour, or until a fork comes out clean.

Let cool for 10 minutes before inverting onto a plate.  If I had some confectioner's sugar I would have sprinkled some on top, but alas, I had run out.