This is a great recipe to make with small children, as once you’ve blended the pears, you just put all the ingredients (except the pears for the bottom/top) into a bowl and mix.

Ingredients:

300ml pear puree – blend pears to make this. How many pears you need depends on how much of them is usable. It’s a good way to use up the decent pears when bits have gone bad. As a rough guide, 4 decent pears should be enough.

1-2 pears to garnish, peeled and sliced.

90ml vegetable oil, and a little extra for greasing

225g plain flour

3 heaped teaspoons baking powder

100g brown sugar

Greaseproof paper. Foil will work if you don’t have any

Foil to cover the cake

1.

Heat the oven to 200 C/180 C fan oven/gas mark 6.

2.

Blend 300ml pears. Put them in a bowl with all the other ingredients (sifting the flour and baking powder) and mix well.

3.

Line your cake tin/loaf/oven-proof dish with greaseproof paper and grease with oil before laying the peeled chopped pears over the bottom of it.

4.

Tip in the mixture and bake for around 20 minutes. If it’s going brown on top, poke with a skewer or sharp knife. It it comes out clean, you’re done, if not, and it probably won’t, wrap in foil to stop it burning on top and bake for another 10 minutes before checking again. Leave it in the oven for another 10 minutes if the skewer is coming out sticky, then check again. Cooking time will vary according to how deep your container is, so just keep an eye on it.

5.

Remove from oven and leave to cool a bit (10 minutes-ish) before covering with a plate and carefully turning over. Best served warm, with vegan vanilla ice cream.