Caramel and pear cake

Hello, fall! I don’t know if I’m excited about this or not, because suddenly I can feel the responsibilities coming back in my poor student life, but I will try to embrace the fabulous beginning of a fabulous new season. Too much? OK, I’ll take it down a notch. In my desperate efforts to accept that summer is over, I was willing to sacrifice myself to a cake that has been present in my mind since… well, since I’ve discovered it on Instagram (because that’s my principal source of inspiration along with Pinterest- God bless them both). This amazing company in Moscow called @tortikannuchka  makes the most stunning cakes I’ve ever seen in my life, but one of them got my attention in an unhealthy way: a wonderful cake covered in dried and colored pear slices. I was madly in love with it, so I decided to try and recreate it in my own peasant, non-extremely-talented-chef way. Fast forward to the first days of September – I was blessed with a bag of pears that would represent the first step in the making of a pear cake.

I have to admit that I thought so intense about the exterior of this cake that I had no idea what it was going to be inside it until the big day. I knew that I wanted chocolate, but what tastes would go in harmony together? Not to mention that it had to be in sync with the pear exterior, cause what’s the use of covering your cake in pears if inside it’s going to be, for example, a strawberry cream. So, to recap: chocolate layers, a pear cream (had no idea how to do it) and… caramel, of course. But I never did anything with caramel before (the bought caramel sauce doesn’t count)! There were many unknown factors in this baking operation.

PS: I am proud to say that the black cardboard that served as a background will be retired; I finally managed to paint two wood boards! In my excitement I tried to play a little with the light and some pears. AND with one of the backgrounds.

First things first, I cut some pear slices with a professional slicer machine; it works just as well if you cut them carefully by hand in thin slices. Then I bathe them in sugar syrup colored with blackberries, blueberries and strawberries, and another round with food dye. I have to say that the natural dye from the forest fruits worked waaay better than the bottled one, so if you can, choose the first option of coloring. Place the slices in the oven and wait for them to dry, about an hour, then store them in the pantry, not in the fridge.

I baked the chocolate cake, it was cool. Then I got to the cream filling part. How does one melt sugar and transforms it into caramel syrup?? Luckily my mom was there to the rescue and she showed me how to get that amber colored sweet caramel. OK, I figured that part out. But how about the pears? There was no pear cream online so I can get some inspiration, but I already started to chop them in small dices. And poach them. In my mind it would turn into a thick cream like composition, but it wasn’t; it looked like a runny jam stuff. So I added some gelatin, but not enough to make it a stiff gelatin sheet, just the right amount to thicken it a little bit. Yay! I was finally on the assembly part of the cake.

One cake, syrup, caramel cream, one cake, syrup, caramel cream on the sides so the pears won’t drip out, pears on the inside, one cake, syrup, caramel cream, more caramel cream. I measured the diameter of the cake and start arranging the pear slices on the counter top in a pattern so I won’t freak out if I have a weird combination of colors left. Then I simply started to add them to the cake, slice by slice, until it was all covered (or that’s what I hoped I did). My cake was finished!!! I still don’t know how the master bakers keep their pear slices from curling, but I won’t give up and still try to ace this technique!