Pear crumble cake

As much as a love shopping for groceries at the supermarket, shopping for them online has taken dominance of late - the ease of clicking with none of the difficulties of trying to lug everything home, the only trade-off is the fun of stumbling across something new on the shelves. Another plus point for online shopping is that you can decide on recipes while you shop and this time around, the conference pears were simply calling out to me and since we couldn't decide on whether we wanted a cake or a crumble, we went for the best of both worlds.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

100g sugar

115g butter

2 eggs

3 teaspoons vanilla extract

200g flour

1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder

120ml milk

2 pears. sliced

For the crumble:

40g caster sugar

100g butter

120g flour

2 teaspoons cinnamon

30g mixed nuts

30g oats

For the crumble:

Rub butter into flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Add the rest of the crumble ingredients and mix well.

For the cake:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celcius.

Cream sugar and butter, beat in the eggs one by one and stir in the vanilla.

Combine the flour and baking powder and fold into the butter mixture, mixing well.

Stir in the milk until the mixture is smooth.

Pour into a 20cm tin and layer the top of the cake mixture with the sliced pears before pouring the crumble topping onto everything.

Bake for 55 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

I have to admit, I was quite delighted with how it turned out, particularly the cake portion of the thing. The recipe couldn't get any simpler, I thought, yet it turned out wonderfully soft and moist.

Because really, why pick when you can have it all?