Poached Pear Olive Oil Cake

You're all going to fall in the love with this beautiful, easy to make poached pear olive oil cake. I loved the cake so much that I made it twice within a few weeks! I may be hiding the reason why I made it twice since that's usually not my style. Here's the real story:

I was writing a blog post so I had to upload pics from my memory card onto my laptop. After I had finished my post, a few hours passed and I decided I wanted to bake something. I had already bought the pears for this recipe so I got to work. I was taking some great pictures of the cake before and after it went into the oven, really loving my shots. I was so excited to blog about this recipe! Well, maybe an hour or so later, it all of a sudden hits me that I never put my memory card back into my camera. All of those lovely pictures never even existed. I definitely went to bed angry that night.

So here we are, with cake number two. This cake could not be easier to make. The pears are cooked in sugar water for about five minutes to soften them up and add a little extra sweetness. The cake batter was quick to whip up in my food processor. Just like that, I'm ready to put everything together and stick this bad boy in the oven.

The big lesson I learned from the first time I made this was not to overfill the loaf pan. I had too much batter and filled it almost to the top, which led to a lot of burning batter on the bottom of my oven. The second time around, I used the extra batter to make individual cakes in my muffin pan...yum! This cake is really tasty on its own, a refreshing lemon flavor coming out from the lemon juice and zest added to the batter.

This one turned out much better looking than the first since I had some trouble getting it out of the loaf pan before. The cake just looks so beautiful once you cut into it. Each piece has a cross-sectional slice of pear and this moist, citrus-y olive oil cake that perfectly compliments the mild sweetness of the pear. I highly recommend you try this cake right away...you won't be disappointed!