Pear, cardamom and caramel traybake: GBBO 2018 Week 2 - cake week

I’m not that familiar with making traybakes – I haven’t worked out the ‘science’ of it – can any cake recipe be baked in a square/rectangular tin and be called a traybake? Are some types / flavours of cake better suited to being baked as a traybake? I’m clueless about it all but of the 3 GBBO challenges for cake week, the traybake seemed the most manageable for me given my track record of baking fails and disasters. 

So I decided I was going with an autumnal vibe and settled on making “An apple, salted caramel and popcorn traybake” but somehow have ended up with a “Pear, Cardamom and Caramel” traybake. 

Caramel was super easy to make and at the last moment I decided not to add salt to it so just ending up with plain caramel rather than salted caramel. I used the Salted Caramel recipe at BBC good food (but without the salt).

 Next I was going to use some of the apples I had picked, stewed and frozen from my little apple tree in the garden – but then I found I had a couple of pears lurking in the bottom of the fridge so apple became pear and just to add a bit more interest to it I ground up some cardamom seeds and added that in – about half a teaspoon.

To make ground cardamom from these green cardamom pods, I gently crushed them in a pestle and morter to remove the outer skin and then more vigorously crushed the seeds to grind them up. 

I’ve always said if heaven has a scent, it smells of cardamom! I can’t get enough of it – although I know that too much of it can end up tasting a bit overpowering and almost medicinal.

So here is the final recipe I ended up with for my Pear, cardamom and caramel traybake. 

Ingredients:
225g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
225g caster sugar
2 large eggs
150g melted butter
2 pears
half a teaspoon ground cardamom
A sprinkle of toasted flaked almonds to add on top at the end
A drizzle of caramel sauce (see above-mentioned link to the caramel recipe I used)

Method:
1. Pre-heat oven to 140C (fan). If you don't have a fan oven then it needs 160C.
2. Grease and line your traybake tin with baking paper. I used two tins of 7.5 X 8.5 inch.
3. Mix together all of the ingredients except for the pear, flaked almonds and caramel sauce. The batter looked more of an 'oily' texture than I'm used to for cake batter - almost like the texture of choux batter. 
4. Remove the cores of the pears and dice the pear into fairly small cubes.  Add to the cake batter and this time mix in by hand. I didn't want the pear to get completely squished in the mixture but to remain as small chunks in there.
5. Divide the batter between the two tins and bake in the oven for 40 minutes (until a skewer comes out clean).
6. Leave to cool then remove from tin and drizzle with caramel sauce and sprinkle with toasted flaked almonds.  

I was curious to see if it would cut cleanly into pieces as was required on GBBO this week and thankfully on the whole I was able to get neat-ish slices. 

Having made two small traybakes rather than one large one, I took one to work and we had one at home. I don't think I've ever received such great compliments on my baking! I have to say I surprised myself at how well they turned out and how great the flavours worked together. 

After playing it safe with last weeks bake and not adding any twists or unique flavours to my Cornish Fairings last week, I felt pleased that my made up flavour combo really worked well this week! 

Delighted to be linking up with Mummy Mishaps and Casa Costello for GBBO Bloggers 2018: