Pear Cake

Heat the oven to 180°C, or 160°C fan. Melt the butter in a small pan over a low heat and leave it to cool. Brush a 24 cm springform tin with a little of the butter and line the base with baking paper.

Finely grate the zest of the lemon and set it aside. Peel, quarter and core the pears. Cut 2 of them into 1.5 cm dice and the other 2 into slices 5 mm thick, then toss all the pears with 1 tbsp of juice squeezed from the lemon so they do not brown.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar, lemon zest and salt with an electric whisk for 5 minutes, until pale, thick and doubled in volume. The mixture should fall from the whisk in a ribbon that sits on the surface before sinking in.

With the whisk on low, pour in the melted butter in a thin stream, then the milk and vanilla extract.

Set aside 1 tbsp of the flour for the pears. Sift the rest of the flour and the baking powder over the bowl and fold them in with a spatula, stopping as soon as no dry flour shows; overmixing knocks out the air.

Toss the diced pears with the reserved flour and fold them into the batter, along with the dark chocolate, chopped into 1 cm chunks, if using.

Scrape the batter into the tin and level it. Fan the pear slices over the top in overlapping circles, pressing them in lightly.

Bake for 45 to 55 minutes, until risen and deep golden and a skewer pushed into the centre between the slices comes out clean, apart from a little moist pear. If the top browns too fast, cover it loosely with foil for the last 15 minutes.

Leave the cake in the tin for 15 minutes, then release the sides and let it cool on a rack for at least 1 hour. Warm, the soft crumb tears when it is cut.

Just before serving, dust the cake with the icing sugar through a small sieve. Added too early, it melts into the moist top.