Pear & Pistachio Crinkle Cake

This Pear & Pistachio Crinkle Cake was inspired by a cake made by the wonderful Williams Kitchen. My husband Andy will often send me reels and recipes he thinks I’d like and this glorious cake was one that really caught my attention.  I love seeing a recipe that I instantly know I could adapt and either make with different ingredients or in a simpler way but be just as delicious.

I love the combination of pear and pistachio and the nut butter here is so lovely and could easily be replaced with peanut butter or cashew nut butter or event Nutella.

For The Cake

• 10 sheets filo (phylo) pastry
• Melted butter – roughly 150g
• 150g pistachios
• Caster sugar
• 2 pears – halved from root to tip and then sliced

For The Custard

• 3 large eggs & 1 large egg yolk
• 250ml milk
• 250ml single cream
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon almond butter (or any other nut butter or chocolate spread)
• Honey and Greek yogurt to serve.

Place the milk, vanilla and single cream in a pan and gently heat to a simmer. Take it off the heat and allow it to cool. You want it barely warm.

Crack the eggs into a large bowl along with the yolk, sugar and nut butter and beat together well.  Once combined continue to whisk as you pour the warm milk in in a steady stream. Set aside.

Butter a round oven-proof dish such as a flan dish or similar.

Crush the pistachios to a rough crumble. This can be done by hand, bashed with a rolling pin or in a food processor in pulse mode.

Brush a sheet of pastry with butter (this doesn’t have to be perfectly done) then sprinkle with roughly a tablespoon of crushed pistachios and half a tablespoon of caster sugar.

Now ‘fan fold’ the pastry sheets into a band encompassing the pistachios and sugar within the folds. Place this band of pastry into the dish along the edge. Continue to create these bands of fan-folded pastry and place them into the pan slightly overlapping the last edge of the previous pastry. You will start to spiral inwards until you’ve used up all the pastry sheets. It should be a fairly tight spiral.

Pre-heat the oven to 170C (fan) / 345F

Carefully slide slices of pear in between the folds all the way around the dish and into the centre.

Gently pour the custard over the pastry. Sprinkle the top with sugar and bake for 45 mins or until the top of the cake is golden and risen and the custard is set.

Once out of the oven drizzle with runny honey and sprinkle with more crushed pistachios. Serve with Greek yoghurt.

For more cake recipes, check these out on Dom in the Kitchen.

Eat and of course, enjoy!