Pear Cake

We are excited to share our first pear cake recipe with you! With its light pear flavor, tender crumb, and homemade caramel glaze, you cannot go wrong with this delicious dessert. It is heavenly!

Why we Love It

There are many reasons to love this pear cake. Here are just a few:

• Soft, caramel glazed cake has diced pears and a hint of cinnamon in every bite.
• We love bundt cakes and pound cakes for a quick, easy-to-decorate, and decadent dessert!
• Makes a wonderful birthday cake recipe, holiday cake recipe, or a dessert just because!
• The recipe calls for canned pears, making this fruity cake a wonderful go-to recipe year round!

How to Make Pear Cake

This cake is very easy to put together. You can find the full, printable recipe at the bottom of this post. Here is a quick rundown of our steps!

For the Cake

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, grease and flour a bundt pan.
• First, drain the can of pear halves and place them on a cutting board. Using a sharp knife, dice the pears and set aside for later.

• In a medium sized bowl add these dry ingredients: cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Whisk to blend, set aside.
• For the wet ingredients: In another bowl or measuring cup add the sour cream, milk, and vanilla extract. Blend with a fork and set aside

• In the bowl of your mixer, mix the softened butter until smooth. Gradually add the white sugar and mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until it is lightened in color and fluffy.

• Add the eggs one at a time, mixing until the yellow of the yolk has blended.
• With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture and the sour cream mixture alternately, beginning and ending with flour mixture (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of wet). Mix just until combined. (The batter will be thick.)
• Gently fold the drained, diced pears into the cake batter.

• Scoop the batter into the prepared bundt cake pan, smoothing over the top with the back of a spoon.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Check at about 40 minutes, if the top of the cake is becoming too dark, cover loosely with aluminum foil. Allow the cake to cool in the pan, on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out.

For the Caramel Glaze

We love this homemade caramel glaze recipe. It is so easy and tastes fantastic with a variety of cake recipes from pumpkin bundt cake to maple pound cake, snickerdoodle cake and more. Today's pear cake is no exception! You will love this combination.

You can find the full recipe in the recipe card at the bottom of this post. The caramel glaze is a combination of butter, light brown sugar, heavy cream, salt, and a bit of light corn syrup (to prevent graininess).

The mixture is heated in a saucepan until it begins to boil, then the heat is turned down while the mixture simmers for six minutes. After that, pour into a heat proof bowl (or a casserole dish for fast cooling) until it thickens to the desired consistency for drizzling.

We added our caramel glaze through a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away for more control. Spooning the caramel glaze over the cake is fine too!

Here is a peek inside!

Recipe FAQs

More Fruity Cakes

We've shared many fruity cake recipes over the years that it would be hard to pick a favorite! Make sure to check out these other delicious cakes when you have a chance.

Some of our favorites are Pineapple Upside Down Bundt Cake, Pina Colada Cake, Lemon Buttermilk Cake, and Strawberry Shortcake Cake!

Thanks so much for stopping by today. We hope that you enjoy the recipe! Make sure to check out our full collection of cake recipes (which includes cake recipes from scratch as well as cake mix recipes)!

If you are interested in cake decorating, we have hundreds of free cake decorating tutorials on our site as well, for all sorts of occasions!

Pear Cake

BY Melissa and Bebe

This ultra moist, tender Pear Cake is sure to please a crowd! You will love the bits of pear in every slice, as well as the homemade caramel glaze!

Prep Time: 20 minutes mins

Cook Time: 45 minutes mins

Course: Dessert

Servings: 15 servings

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Equipment

• ▢
  Etekcity 0.1g Food Kitchen Scale, Bowl, Digital Grams and Ounces for Weight Loss, Dieting, Baking, Cooking, and Meal Prep, 11lb/5kg, Stainless Steel Silver Optional but helpful- The most accurate way to ensure that you are using the intended amount of ingredients- especially when it comes to flour.

Ingredients

• ▢ 2 sticks (226g) unsalted butter, softened
• ▢ 2 cups (400g) sugar
• ▢ 3 large room temperature eggs
• ▢ 3 cups (342g) cake flour (plain in the UK) — if you do not have cake flour see substitution below
• ▢ 1 ½ teaspoons (7g) baking powder
• ▢ ½ teaspoon (3g) baking soda
• ▢ 1½ teaspoons (3g) cinnamon
• ▢ ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
• ▢ 1 cup (242g) sour cream
• ▢ ⅓ cup (80g) milk
• ▢ 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
• ▢ 1 can (15oz) Pear Halves (We used Del Monte brand) Drain and then dice.

Caramel Glaze

• ▢ ½ stick unsalted butter (57g)
• ▢ 1 cup light brown sugar (217g) packed into measuring cup
• ▢ ½ cup heavy cream (126g)
• ▢ ½ teaspoon salt (2g)
• ▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (4g)
• ▢ 1 Tablespoon light corn syrup (18g)

Instructions

For the Pears

• Drain the can of pear halves and place on a cutting board. Using a sharp knife, dice the pears and set aside. They will be folded into the batter as the last step.

For the Pear Cake

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F, grease and flour a bundt pan. We used a bundt pan with a 12 cup baking capacity, 10 inches across. See notes re: pan size
• In a medium sized bowl add the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Whisk to blend, set aside.
• In another bowl or measuring cup add the sour cream, milk, and vanilla extract. Blend with a fork and set aside
• In the bowl of your mixer, mix the softened butter until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until it is lightened in color and fluffy.
• Add the eggs one at a time, mixing until the yellow of the yolk has blended.
• With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture and the sour cream mixture alternately, beginning and ending with flour mixture (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of wet). Mix just until combined. (The batter will be thick.)
• Gently fold the drained, diced pears into the cake batter.
• Scoop the batter into the prepared bundt cake pan, smoothing over the top with the back of a spoon.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. It should also spring back when lightly touched. Check at about 40 minutes, if the top of the cake is becoming too dark, cover loosely with aluminum foil. Allow the cake to cool in the pan, on a wire rack for 10 minutes before turning out.
• Makes 7 cups of cake batter

Caramel Glaze

• Using a medium size saucepan (deep enough to prevent boil over) melt the butter over medium heat.
• Add the brown sugar and the remaining ingredients and heat on medium high heat.
• Stir to blend, try to keep mixture off the sides of the pan. Once the mixture begins to boil, reduce the heat to low.
• Simmer for 6 minutes, checking often to make sure that it is not going to boil over. It should still be bubbling. After 6 minutes, remove from heat.
• Keep in mind that the caramel will thicken up a bit as it cools. You can pour it into a long heat proof glass casserole dish if you want it to cool more quickly. We often refrigerate to cool it off as well.
• Once it has cooled and thickened to the desired consistency, you can either spoon the caramel over the cooled bundt cake, or spoon it into a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away, and pipe over the cake for more control.
• Makes about 1 cup caramel sauce. It can be kept in the refrigerator in an airtight container up to 2 weeks.

Notes

Substitution for Cake Flour

Using all purpose flour (plain in UK) to make Cake Flour: For each cup of flour in a recipe, remove 2 Tablespoons of flour and replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch (cornflour in the UK). This recipe has 3 cups of flour so you will measure out 3 cups of all purpose flour, remove 6 Tablespoons and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch, whisk to blend

Bundt Pan Size

Our bunt pan has a baking capacity of 12 cups and is 10 inches across. (This recipe makes 7 cups of batter). Your bundt pan may be smaller or larger than ours which can effect the bake time. If it is a larger pan, the batter will be more shallow in the pan and will bake more quickly. The opposite is true for a smaller pan.

If using a smaller bundt pan, be careful not to fill more than ⅔ full (Or allow at least 1-1.5 inches space from top of batter to top of pan. You can make cupcakes with any extra batter ;0)

Storing & Freezing

Keep the finished cake in an airtight container or under a cake dome for 2-3 days. After that, move to the refrigerator.

This cake can also be wrapped tightly in plastic wrap & foil and frozen for up to three months! To thaw, place in the refrigerator the day before, and continue to thaw at room temperature the next morning.

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