Crackly Pear Cake

Earlier this week when I posted the Pear Sauce recipe, I had asked if anyone had any recipes they thought I should make to use up my mass quantity of pears.  Let me just say, THANK YOU NIKI!!!  She sent me a link to two pear cake recipes.

We went to my sister's house for a bon voyage dinner tonight - she's heading to France for a week for work.  Yep, she's fancy.  I told her to smuggle me back some cheese.  And wine.  Anyway, I made one of the cakes today to take over.  Um, you can thank me, and Niki, later.

I did make just a couple changes to the original recipe.  It calls for lemon zest and I didn't have a lemon, so I threw in a splash of bottled lemon juice.  Also, after standing and holding my hand mixer for what felt like 40 days and 40 nights, my egg white never got stiff, so I threw the bowl in the sink decided to just skip it and left that part off the top. 

Here it is coming together at my house:

I took over some salted caramel ice cream from our farmer's market to go with it.

The raspberries came out of my sister's garden.

Here's dessert on my plate:

The first words out of my sister's mouth after her first bite were, "Oh wow."

The Dad made yummy and wow noises the entire time he was eating it.
My brother-in-law was silent, which means he was too busy eating to talk.

I'm not a huge cake person, but this cake is really, really good.  

Even with the couple of things I had to change.

Wanna see what she made us for dinner?

Pulled pork tacos.

Um, yeah, they were as delicious as they look.  

I may have eaten three.

Two for me, one for the baby.  :o)

Which, by the way, I've been using that as an excuse with the kids lately.

I tell them I'm eating something for the baby.

Today at lunch The Kid says, why did you get TWO of those?

One for me, one for the baby.

Doesn't the baby get everything you eat anyway?

Uh, yes.

I think you just wanted to eat two.

Smarty pants.