My mum's easy Pear Traybake Recipe

This pear tray bake is made with simple, everyday, ingredients found in your pantry, it is moist, light, soft, super delicious, and incredibly easy and quick to prepare. You will want to make it over and over again, and it will become your number one recipe for a traybake.

This recipe covers it all when it comes to sweet treats, it is perfect for any occasion and it can be enjoyed any time of the day. You can serve it at room temperature or cold as a snack, it goes really well with tea and coffee, it can be made in advance and taken to the picnics; but, it also can be equally served warm as an elegant dessert when “dressed up” a bit and accompanied with cream, whipped cream, fromage frais, yoghurt, or a good quality vanilla ice cream or gelato.

This sumptuously moist pear traybake is incredibly popular back home on the Slovenian coast and baked in the households on a regular basis all year round. In fact, the idea behind this traybake is to use the same basic sponge recipe and add different fresh seasonal fruits or their combinations, so you always end up with a slightly different cake. And of course, using jarred or tinned fruit in this recipe is perfectly fine too.

In the autumn you can use for example pears, apples, plums and blackberries and add ground cinnamon and clove and orange zest to enhance that characteristic autumnal flavours, on the contrary, in the spring and summer months the use of peaches, cherries, nectarines and lemon zest will add freshness to the sponge base.

I am sharing here my mum's recipe for a tray bake she used to make, and still does, it will become a staple in your sweet things repertoire to bake.

Ingredients

Serves 12

  • 3-4 ripe pears (about 500g), tinned pears also work well in this recipe

  • lemon zest and juice of ½ small unwaxed lemon

  • 3 medium eggs (room temperature)

  • 150g caster sugar

  • 130g plain white all purpose flour

  • 6g baking powder (1 Tsp)

  • 5 Tbsp neutral tasting oil (75ml)

  • ½ Tsp vanilla extract

  • ¼ Tsp ground cinnamon, optional

  • ¼ Tsp ground cloves, optional

  • icing sugar, for dusting

 Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180C/Fan 160C/Gas 4.

Lightly grease a tray bake or roasting tin, approx 30 x 23cm (12 x 9), then line the base with baking parchment.

Peel, core and thinly slice the pears. Transfer into a bowl, add lemon zest and squeeze the lemon juice over them. This will help the pears from turning brown and discolouring but also adds a bit of of extra flavour.

Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl, add the sugar and beat with a free-standing or hand-held mixer for about 7 minutes or until the mixture has thickened, becomes slightly pale in colour and foamy.

Add sifted flour and baking powder along with oil, vanilla extract, and ground cinnamon and clove, if using. Stir with a wooden spoon to incorporate well all the ingredients.

Add pears to the mixture and stir with a wooden spoon or spatula.

Transfer the mixture into the tray.

Bake in the pre-heated oven for about 40-45 minutes or until the cake is golden, firm to the touch and and when inserting the knife into the centre should come out clean.

Leave to cool then turn out, remove the parchment, dust with a bit of icing sugar and cut into 12 pieces.

You can also serve it warm as a dessert with cream, whipped cream, fromage frais or a good quality vanilla ice cream or gelato.

Just a thought

In this traybake you could use other fruit such as apples, peaches, nectarines, cherries or plums or a combination of the fruits that your prefer, and all of the fresh fruits can be replaced by jarred or tinned alternative.

You can freeze this tray bake for up to three month.

Wine suggestion

Moscato di Trani DOC Dolce Naturale "Dulcis in Fundo" 2019 - Torrevento