Foolproof? Hmmm. Italian pear cake (Torta di pera alla nonna)

You will hear it said, or read it, that Italians do not do much dessert preparation at home. Classically, this was true. If Annalena's family ate dessert, it was almost always fruit. If the fruit was fresh, she and her famiglia sat there and pulled grapes off of stems, or cut oranges or apples, or gorged on cherries, etc. If it was not, Nana's dreaded fruit salad would follow. OH, those salads. The poor woman, confronted with no budget, and rotting fruit, did her best. Some of the combinations were, shall we say , interesting. Bananas and peaches, with canned plums. Yes, that may be the strangest one.

Annalena is told that this is changing and more Italian home cooks are in fact making desserts at home. Indeed, her erstwhile teacher, the soon to be Dr. Mullins , was reporting on a possible need for a standard intervention, given the amount of cake baking he was doing while sojourning in Modena. And one does hear reports as to the failure of the "Mediterranean diet," whatever that is.

The fact is, ragazzi, Italians are no different than any of you: we have sweet tooths. Coyly, we address them by eating gelato on the street, or sitting in cafes with cookies or other goodies, so you don't find the stuff in our house, but we are in fact doing our share. Think of some things you know: panna cotta. Tiramisu. Cannoli. Do these sound like fruit desserts? I think not. We are eating them, and we are simply making them better than anyone else.

There. I said it. French chefs, eat your hearts out. But we are having others do them.

Notwithstanding this, every Italian home cook needs a repertoire of simple desserts because, well, you never know. And this is one, with a caveat.

The recipe comes from Marcella Hazan, who prefaces it by saying "the only way for this cake to fail is an affirmative act of sabotage." Well.... Annalena begs to differ. This is an easy cake, but it is not so easy as her mentor would have it to be. So, learn from Annalena's experience as we make this one. She shall explain the pitfalls of what is, essentially, a very easy cake.

You start by needing fruit: 2 pounds of it. This is going to be a lot of fruit for this cake. Bosc pears, please, because they are nice and dry. Ripe and juicy, but not soft. Peel them, and cut them into small chunks rather than the slices Ms. Hazan recommends. Annalena shall explain.

Put them to the side, while you preheat your oven to 350, and then prepare your batter. No heavy equipment here. You need 2 large eggs, 1/4 cup of milk, a cup of sugar and 1.5 cup of flour with a teaspoon of salt. And that's it.

You do notice what is missing , yes? No butter, no leaven. This is a dense cake. Butter will reemerge, but only as an accent.

With these ingredients, you need only a big spoon and a bowl. Beat the eggs and the milk until they are "as one." Then stir in the sugar, and then the flour. You will have a big, heavy batter. This is as it should be. Leave that and tend to your pan.

Get a nine inch pan of some type, be it spring form or not, and - BUTTER THAT SUCKER VERY VERY WELL. BUTTER IT TO AN INCH OF ITS LIFE. And then, if you have some unflavored bread crumbs around, put them in the pan, and coat the whole thing. If you don't, PLEASE MAKE SURE THAT PAN IS BUTTERED. This is why:the batter is free of butter, and with the large amount of sugar, there is little to help you release it from the pan.

Now, spoon that batter into the pan. You may have to dig and work, as it's rather dense. Spread it out as well as you can, and then dump the fruit over it. If you like, you can also stir the fruit and batter together first.

The reason for chunking the fruit, rather than slicing it, comes out here. Sliced, the pieces are larger, and heavier, they sink to the bottom of the pan, and they stick. Trust me on this.

OK, now once you have this whole thing in the pan, you need to do a few things, and you may want to do a few more. You MUST take about 2 tablespoons of butter, and break it into little pieces, and strew it over the cake. Ms. Hazan suggests adding some whole cloves as an option. Cloves are difficult. They are not to everyone's taste. But cinnamon is. Cinnamon sugar is even more . So Annalena sprinkled cinnamon sugar on it and, at the last minute, she added candied ginger, and stayed away from the sugar coated walnuts she wanted to add.

Into the oven it goes, for fifty minutes or so.

Not hard, was it? It will bake up, but it will not rise very high. The butter will sink into the cake.

When it comes out of the oven, let it sit for a few minutes - 10-15. If you have used a springform, run a knife around the edge, and release it. You are on easy street. If you did not, you will have some work to do. Again, run the knife, and have a rack ready. Put that on top of the cake, protect your hands with gloves, and turn the thing over. You may have to rap it a few times to get it out... and unfortunately, in so doing, the bottom may break up a bit.

Despair not. That is the bottom, and you can hide that, with the wonderful crispy cinammony top.

And that's it. Now, this is not a standard cake texture. It is not airy, and it is not fluffy. Rather, it is closer to a very thick pancake. And that's fine.


You can do this with apples, and you could probably do it with juicier fruits, like mangos, that have some solidity. Ripe banana may work. Annalena would stay away from truly juicy stuff like pineapples, but cometh late summer, she may try this with plums. And peaches. and nectarines.

Face it, ragazzi, there are times when you want to serve a dessert, but... . Annalena believes you probably have everything in the house right now. Don't have cinnamon sugar? Well, you have sugar and cinnamon dont you? Hmmmm.

To the pantry, ragazzi. Make it. Tell Annalena how it turned out. The times, they are a changin'