RHC: Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake

I'm back baking in real-time, after posting on baking I'd done in advance of three weeks of travel. There was the annual trip to exhibit at the ag. show, one day at home, my 9-day vacation at Disney World, one day at home, and a trip to Reston, Va. and Washington, D.C. for meetings. I'm glad to be home this week! The post will be short, though, because I'm still trying to recover my brain, lost somewhere in all that travel.

Cake of the week is the Swedish Pear and Almond Cake, a sour cream cake with a band of almond cream (almond paste, sugar, and egg) and a layer of pear slices. Theoretically, the layers of almond cream and pears, applied to the top of the cake batter, sink during the baking to end up at the bottom--which becomes the top as you turn the cake out. In actuality, my pear layers stopped about half-way through the cake, though the almond cream did end up on top.


Overall it's a very easy cake, except for cleaning up after using the food processor for the almond cream and the stand mixer for the cake batter. It rose beautifully and turned out easily, and the design of the Bavaria bundt pan I chose showed up nicely. Tasting results were good too--I found it a moist cake with good flavor, almost a pound cake texture (which I love), though I could wish that mine hadn't ended up with essentially 3 zones: the plain cake, the pear layer, and the two bites of almond-y goodness. It didn't integrate well, though each bit was tasty on its own.

Other tasters' comments mostly stuck to "good cake", with the exception of one friend who was wanting a different cake. When I told her this was a pear and almond cake, she was expecting more the style of the apple upside-down cake or the plum and blueberry torte--half cake, half fruit. That is not this cake. :)