In my last tea post for June, I’m falling in love with poaching fruit in nontraditional poaching syrup. Here, we poached six pears (actually, I had an extra two to use up, so I tossed them in as well) in Earl Grey tea. And goodness gracious, was it delicious.
The Earl Grey tea really cuts the sweetness of the whole cake down. It’s not quite savory, but you can absolutely taste the tea in the pears when the whole thing is put together. Earl Grey is one of my favorites, so I was eager to see how it played with the fruit and the butter crumble on top. This is easily one of my favorite-tasting cakes to date.
The steps actually took a lot of time. Peeling and dicing that many pears was a lot. Waiting for them to cool after poaching took what felt like forever. Then we had to make the batter, and then the crumble. It was all worth it, though.
I used a 9″ square baking pan to make these, but I think I should have gone larger. The crumble was right up to the brim of the pan, and thankfully because of its heft and the pears’ weight, the cake didn’t balloon like I’d feared. Next time, I may use a larger pan. The recipe does a good job with the ratio of pears to cake to crumble; none of it felt overwhelming or two heavy until you tried to lift an entire piece to serve. :)
While I’m thinking of it, here are some other tea-inspired June recipes you may enjoy:
- Homemade Lavender Extract
- Chocolate Earl Grey Cupcakes with Lavender Frosting
- Vanilla Earl Grey Cupcakes with Lavender Frosting
- Make Your Own Chocolate Chips – Any Flavor! (with Green Tea and Lavender)
- Green Tea and Lavender Custom Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Green Tea Swirl Cookies
- Chai Snickerdoodles
- Chai Cake with Honey Ginger Cream
And last but not least, the beautiful layers of this pear and Earl Grey crumble cake!
What an interesting way to flavor the pears! This looks and sounds just delicious!
So glad you liked the recipe! It’s one of my favourites recently! When I made it, I poached the pears the night before so it didn’t feel like a huge chore making the cake itself. Beautiful photos :)