Pear Delight

 The Harvest edition of the Penzey Spice catalog 2014 has a recipe for a apple cake. Called Apple Delight the recipe was from Carol Maier. It looked very good and I was wanting a recipe to use some ripe pears I had on hand. 

 With only a slight change in the recipe we all agreed that this is a very good recipe. While I am sure it is good with the apples, it was excellent with the pears. Thanks Penzey Spice and Mrs Maier. Which ever you use, do not over bake it. I left mine in a few minutes longer and wish I had not. The time given in the recipe would have been better. The cream cheese layer threw me off as to the doneness of the cake. Next time I will go with the time stated.

Pear Delight  (Apple Delight )

Crust:

2 cups flour

3 Teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons butter

¼ cup sugar

⅔ cups milk

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 beaten egg

Filling:

1 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened

¼ cup sugar

1 egg

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping:

2 ½ cups sliced ¼ inch thick peeled, cored pears (sprinkle pear slices with ½ tsp. Lemon juice, mix gently)

2 teaspoons sugar

½ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon Kosher salt (⅛ teaspoon if using table salt)

 Preheat oven to 350°. Grease and flour 13 x 9 inch baking pan

 Cut the butter into dry ingredients until they are small crumbs. Combine the dry ingredients, sugar and liquid (milk, oil, egg) and beat well. Pour into the greased pan and set aside.

 Combine the filling ingredients and beat till smooth and well blended. Drop randomly on top of the crust in pan and smooth evenly over the batter. 

 Place pear slices in rows on top of cream cheese layer. If using apples overlap slightly in rows on top of the cream cheese layer. Combine the rest of topping ingredients and sprinkle over the fruit slices. Bake at 350° for 35 to 40 minutes.

*I quartered the pears and than sliced. Next time I will halve them and slice. Placing them on the cake would go much faster.