Upside-Down Pear Gingerbread Cake

The first full week of the last semester. I am teaching "Romeo and Juliet" to my freshmen, which I have taught thirty-seven times and which I still find electrifying, because Shakespeare understood teenagers — their intensity, their certainty, their willingness to die for something they met last Tuesday — and my students, who are fourteen and fifteen and drowning in hormones and feelings, read the play and recognize themselves, and the recognizing is the teaching, the moment when a student realizes that a man who died in 1616 understood exactly how they feel, and the understanding crosses four centuries without losing any of its heat.

Tu B'Shevat — the New Year of the Trees. I served dried fruits and nuts, as I always do, and told Marvin about the holiday, and he listened the way he listens to everything now: with the attentive blankness of a man who is present to the sound of a voice without being present to its meaning. But the sound of my voice is, I think, a comfort to him — the cadence, the rhythm, the familiarity of a voice he has been hearing for forty years. The content may not arrive. The sound does. And sometimes the sound is enough.

I made a dried fruit compote — the Tu B'Shevat fruits, simmered in wine and honey, the same recipe I have made for years. The compote is warm and sweet and jewel-colored and it tastes like hope tastes to me: concentrated, slightly alcoholic, colored with the particular red-gold of dried apricots and figs that have been softened by heat and time. I ate it and thought about trees and roots and the invisible work of survival and the new year that the trees are beginning, beneath the frozen ground, and I thought: I am a tree in January. The work is underground. But I am working.

The compote I made that evening — wine and honey, figs and apricots softened by heat — is its own kind of ritual, but when I want to bring that same warmth to the table in a form I can share with others, I reach for this upside-down pear gingerbread cake. The caramelized pears have that same jewel-colored quality, that same concentrated sweetness that tastes, to me, like hope in January; and the gingerbread beneath them is dark and spiced and grounding in exactly the way I needed, the way roots are grounding, doing their work whether we can see them or not.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour | Servings: 8

Ingredients

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted (for topping)
1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 firm ripe pears, peeled, cored, and sliced 1/4-inch thick
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup hot water

Instructions

Preheat and prepare pan. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C). Pour the 3 tablespoons of melted butter into a 9-inch round cake pan, swirling to coat the bottom evenly. Sprinkle the dark brown sugar in an even layer over the butter.
Arrange the pears. Fan the pear slices in a single, overlapping layer over the brown sugar, working from the outside of the pan toward the center. Set aside.
Mix the dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves until combined.
Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and granulated sugar together until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the egg and beat until well incorporated. Stir in the molasses.
Combine wet and dry. Add half the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir gently until just combined. Stir in the hot water, then add the remaining flour mixture and stir until the batter is smooth. Do not overmix.
Fill the pan. Pour the batter carefully over the pear layer, spreading it gently to the edges of the pan without disturbing the fruit arrangement.
Bake. Bake for 38 to 42 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake (not through the fruit) comes out clean and the edges have pulled slightly from the sides of the pan.
Cool and invert. Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for exactly 10 minutes — no longer, or the caramel may harden and stick. Run a thin knife around the edge of the pan, place a serving plate firmly over the top, and invert in one confident motion. Leave the pan in place for 1 minute before lifting it off slowly.
Serve. Serve warm, as is or with a dollop of whipped cream or creme fraiche.

Nutrition (per serving)

Upside-Down Pear Gingerbread Cake — The Warm, Jewel-Colored Sweetness of a New Year Beneath the Frozen Ground