Weekend Recipe Review - Spiced Pear Cake with Brown Butter Glaze

As I'm writing this, I should be sewing patches on a Cub Scout uniform in preparation of a big district wide Cub Scout camping trip tomorrow night.  You see, when the 8 year old earned his Tiger badge last year, his shirt seemed a little small.  I figured I'd wait the summer to see if he needed to go up a size before I sewed his patch on.  I never managed to get his Bobcat patch sewn on either.Well, it's fall, his shirt still fits, and the patches are still floating around in my sewing table drawer.  He's been begging me to sew the patches on.  I suppose it's time.  I am the Den Leader, after all.

Instead, I found this spiced pear cake at Recipe Girl today, and just knew it'd be the perfect thing to take along to the camping trip for a snack or for a not very healthy breakfast on Sunday morning.  In my defense, the provided breakfast of PopTarts, pre-packaged oatmeals, and leftover Rice Crispy treats from the night before aren't any better.  And this cake is so good, I just had to tell you about it now.

The browned butter glaze on the top of this cake, alone, is worth every second you spend making this cake. Oh.my.goodness!  RecipeGirl warned I'd want to eat this by the spoonful, and not only did I want to, I did.  I used a silicone spatula to scrape every last drop of this glaze out of the bowl when I was done and am not ashamed to admit I stood in the middle of the kitchen licking it off.

The cake itself is autumn on a plate (or napkin or whatever vessel you use).  Of course I tried a piece tonight, because, no, I couldn't send a whole untested cake on a camp-out, now could I?  It's moist, but firm and has beautiful chunks of pears running through it.  Perfect as a mid-afternoon snack after spending the last several hours shooting BB guns and bows, crafting, aiming a catapult, and dodging through obstacle courses.

I used local Asian pears.  While they are a touch more watery than regular pears, they seemed to work fine. I also used pumpkin pie spice instead of cinnamon and nutmeg to spice my pears because I'm still out of cinnamon.  I baked my pear cake in my 9 x 13" sheet pan for 45 minutes instead of two loaf pans.  The only reason why I did this was so that I could snap the lid on the sheet pan and transport it better to a camping trip.  If making this at home, I'd follow RecipeGirl's suggestion and use two loaf pans instead, as I think the presentation is nicer that way.  A keeper for sure!