Today’s recipe is a real treat. It comes from the 1941 Culinary Arts Institute’s 250 Delectable Desserts cookbook. There is a cake cookbook in this series, too, but this cake recipe comes from the desserts edition. It’s filled with custards, soufflés, puddings, and sauces. There’s even a section dedicated to frozen desserts. This cake is in the “dessert cake” chapter, and you can find the sauce in “dessert sauces”.
Results
This cake has a very dry and crumbly batter, but I wouldn’t say the finished cake is dry. The pears help with that. The pears are obviously the stars here, but the cinnamon and brown sugar topping adds just the right amount of sweet spice. The recipe is fairly easy and quick to make. The ingredients are simple and easy to find. It makes a nice cake to whip up for a last minute get together.
The Dutch Hard Sauce isn’t a requirement to enjoy this cake, but it sure is delicious. If you are a fan of adding a lot of sauce to your slices of cake, I’d double the sauce recipe. We barely had enough to go around after everyone slathered their cake in it. Use just a bit of nutmeg in the sauce at first—you can always go back and add more if you’d like. This is a pretty versatile sauce, too. I can imagine eating it with all sorts of desserts.
And, as always, this would be absolutely perfect served with a scoop of ice cream.
History in the Kitchen 