This cake came about from me having a bunch of pears from when I went apple/pear picking with friends, and trying to figure out how to use them up. My original plan was to do a pear-almond pancake, but I was really jet-lagged, having just gotten back from Asia, so breakfast foods weren’t really something I was craving. So instead, I figured, why not try making a cake with the pears? I was really committed to the concept of pear-almond, but I thought about doing an upside down cake. I love baking them – you can use whatever seasonal fruit you have on hand, press it into a layer of caramel, bake a cake batter on top of that, and you have a tender cake that is embedded with caramelized fruit. However, if I just did that, it would be the same as the peach one I made earlier this summer. So I wanted to do a spin on that, using almond flour and kinako(toasted soybean powder) to make this cake entirely gluten-free! Kinako is a popular ingredient, used in Japanese desserts, like warabimochi. It tastes like peanut butter, so pairing it with almond makes for a super nutty combination. That, coupled with brown butter, is nutty overload and it would play off of the pears gorgeously. So in the case of this recipe, we have a gluten-free pear-almond-kinako cake, speckled with brown butter and cinnamon, baked with a layer of caramelized pears and almonds. This recipe used up 2 of my pears, and created a cake that could comfortably serve 10-12 people, and it was surprisingly simple to put together! It does take a while to bake(all of the pears added a surprisingly large amount of moisture, even though I removed wet ingredients to offset that), but it was all worth it in the same, with a super comforting dessert.

Makes 10-12 servings:
For the caramel:
1 cup sugar
A pinch of salt
2 tbsp unsalted butter

In a pot, heat up the sugar and salt until they reach 275 F, or begins to a turn an amber color. Add in the butter and stir on low heat until melted together. Line a 10-inch cake pan with parchment and pour in the caramel. Allow to cool slightly.

For the decorative layer:
1 bosch pear, peeled, cored, and sliced thinly
almond flakes

Sprinkle almond flakes onto the caramel and arrange the pear slices on top of that.

For the cake:
288g pear diced(roughly 1 pear after peeling and coring)
1 stick unsalted butter, browned
2/3 cups dark brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 egg white
a pinch of ground cinnamon
a pinch of salt
1 cup almond flour
1/3 cup kinako
1/4 tsp xanthan gum

In a bowl, mix all of your ingredients together to form your batter. Pour the batter into the cake pan, spreading it into an even layer. Bake at 375 degrees F for 50 minutes. Allow the cake to cool completely before inverting onto a plate and removing the parchment.