Vanilla Pear Cake (Vegan)

Happy Tuesday Everyone!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and Monday, and by this point in the day a good Tuesday as well. My day's been great. Ran a bunch of errands, bought and planted some Lemon Balm and got a free head of broccoli at Sprouts!

I've been doing a lot of playing around in the kitchen the past few days. It's always interesting, because I think I know what I'm making, but the finished product doesn't always turn out that way. For example, yesterday I started off making vegan oatmeal cream sandwich cookies, but by the time I was done playing with and manipulating the ingredients it became a raw strawberry cream pie. How does this happen? I am not entirely sure. But hey, at least the cream part stayed the same, right? 

This Vanilla Pear Cake, however, turned out exactly how I had envisioned it, which I thoroughly appreciated after all my experimenting. It's super easy to make and would be a great treat to serve at brunch or as dessert topped with coconut whipped cream.

Vanilla Pear Cake

• 1 Flax Egg (1 Tablespoon Ground Flaxseeds mixed with 3 Tablespoons Water)
• 1/2 Cup Coconut Oil
• 2/3 Cup Vegan Brown Sugar
• 1 Vanilla Bean (or 1 1/2 Tablespoons Pure Vanilla Extract)
• 1/2 Cup Almond Milk
• 1 1/2 Cup Flour (I used 1/2 Cup Whole Wheat, 1 Cup Unbleached All-Purpose)
• 1/4 Teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1/2 Teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1/2 Teaspoon Cinnamon, plus some for garnish
• 1 1/2 Ripe Pears, 1 diced, 1/2 sliced

Makes 1 6-inch cake or 1 loaf.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease the loaf or cake pan (I used coconut oil). Make the flax egg and set it aside. Soften the coconut oil (mine was soft enough right out of the cupboard). Cream the sugar with the oil, set aside. Whisk the flax egg for about a minute, add the vanilla and whisk for another minute. Add the flax/ vanilla mixture to the oil/ sugar mixture and whisk well. In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Add the almond milk to the wet mixture, whisk well and quickly to not allow the coconut oil to harden again. Add the dry mix to the wet and stir until just combined. Add the chopped pears and mix again until pears are evenly dispersed. Batter may be slightly thicker than normal cake batter, that's okay. Pour/ spoon batter into loaf/ cake pan and arrange pear slices in a spiral design, sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake for approximately 45 minutes or until a toothpick can be inserted and removed cleanly. Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before removing from pan. Then sit down with a cup of tea, a good friend and enjoy your delicious cake.