Dark Gingerbread Pear Upside Down Cake

Sharing this wonderful eggless dark gingerbread pear upside down cake. A light yet moist and flavourful cake.

Pear, ginger and chocolate make a great combination and is a great favourite with DH and mine now :)

Recipe was a combined adaptation from here and here.

For pear base

1 large tinned pear
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
28g butter, melted
60g brown sugar

1. Slice pear and toss into butter ginger-cinnamon mixture.

2. Arrange onto bottom of lined cake tin. While I managed to decorate the base nicely it wasn't obvious once I flipped out the cake. Still need some mulling on how to prepare this the 'inverse-method'. May be I should arrange the cake using a mirror?? [Ps. reason for the lumpy-like mixture is because I was too lazy to melt the butter and used soft butter instead!!]

For gingerbread cake

1 tsp baking soda dissolved in 170g boiling water, set aside to cool
210g all purpose flour
3/4 tsp ground ginger
3.4 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg (optional)
1/4 tsp salt
168g butter, room temperature
15g caster sugar (if you have a sweeter tooth, do increase this amount)
80g dark brown sugar
60g organic molasses

3. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.

4. Shift dry ingredients together.

5. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in slowly molasses.

6. Alternating fold in flour and baking soda solution.

7. Pour batter into prepared tin.

8. Tap tin down gently a few times to remove any air pockets.

9. Bake at 165 degrees for 40-45 min.

10. Cool and serve cake warm with a light dusting of icing sugar or scoop of creme fraiche, if desired.

Bench notes - Cake flavour develops overnight and taste even better the next day!!