Brown Butter Pear and Hazelnut Cake for Early Autumn

Chef's Overview

Dear Chefs, browned butter and toasted hazelnuts are two of the shortest routes to making a simple cake taste like it came from a bakery, and this one uses both without asking for a stand mixer or any technique more demanding than stirring. Early autumn pears are firm and only just sweet, which is exactly what you want in a batter, since a ripe summer-soft pear turns to water in the oven and sinks straight to the bottom. The butter goes onto the stove first and cooks until the milk solids turn amber and smell of caramel, which takes about six minutes and changes the entire character of the finished crumb. Everything else happens in one bowl. It keeps for three days, improves overnight, and is equally defensible at breakfast or after dinner.

Six Minutes That Do the Work of an Extra Ingredient

Butter is roughly eighty percent fat, sixteen percent water and a few percent milk solids, and those solids are the interesting part. Heat butter past the point where the water boils off and the solids begin to toast, producing hundreds of new aromatic compounds through the same browning reaction that makes seared meat and toasted bread taste the way they do. Nothing was added, nothing was substituted, and the flavor is transformed.

The trade is that you lose the water, which matters in baking since water contributes to gluten development and to steam in the oven. In a cake like this one the loss works in your favor, giving you a denser, more tender crumb that carries fruit well instead of a light sponge that would fight it. Pair that with hazelnuts, which are themselves best when toasted hard, and the whole thing tastes considerably more complicated than its ingredient list suggests.

Ingredients You'll Need

Buy pears that are still firm enough to resist a thumb, ideally Bosc or Anjou, and buy them a couple of days early so you can watch them rather than being surprised on baking day. Skin-on hazelnuts are worth the extra step of rubbing them in a towel after toasting, since the skins go bitter in the oven. Weigh your flour if you have a scale, because a heavy hand with a measuring cup is the usual reason a cake like this comes out dry.

For the Cake

• 1 cup unsalted butter, for browning
• 1 cup hazelnuts, toasted and skinned
• 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 3 large eggs, room temperature
• 1/2 cup sour cream or Greek yogurt
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

For the Pears and Top

• 3 firm pears, Bosc or Anjou
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp turbinado sugar
• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom, optional

Step 1: Brown the Butter and Let It Cool

Melt the butter in a light-colored saucepan over medium heat so you can actually see the color change, then keep it moving as it foams, quietens, and begins to throw brown flecks from the bottom. Pull it off at six to eight minutes when the solids are the color of a hazelnut and the smell turns nutty and caramelly, and pour it immediately into a bowl including every one of those flecks. Let it cool to barely warm before it meets the eggs, since hot butter will scramble them.

Step 2: Toast the Hazelnuts Properly

Spread the hazelnuts on a sheet pan and roast at 350°F for ten to twelve minutes until they smell strongly of themselves and the skins have cracked and darkened. Tip them into a clean kitchen towel, fold it over and rub vigorously for thirty seconds, which removes most of the skins, and accept that a few stubborn ones will stay. Chop roughly two thirds and keep the rest whole or halved for the top.

Step 3: Peel and Core the Pears

Peel the pears in long strips from stem to base, then halve them and take out the core with a shallow scooping cut that follows the curve of the seed pocket rather than a straight wedge, which preserves considerably more fruit. Pull out the fibrous string that runs from core to stem while you are there, since it stays tough in the oven. A short blade with a fine point handles that curve far better than anything long, which is the entire argument of How a Paring Knife Navigates Curved Surfaces, and our 3.5" Damascus Paring Knife is what we use for all of it.

Step 4: Slice Two Pears, Dice One

Cut two of the pears into thin lengthwise slices for the top, keeping them even so they fan neatly and bake at the same rate, and dice the third into half-inch pieces to fold through the batter. Toss everything with the lemon juice immediately to stop it browning while you mix. Sliced fruit for the surface and diced fruit in the crumb gives you pear in every bite plus a finished cake that looks like somebody meant it.

Step 5: Combine the Dry Ingredients

Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a bowl, then stir in the chopped hazelnuts so they get coated in flour, which helps keep them suspended rather than sinking. Add the cardamom here if you are using it, and it is worth using, since cardamom and pear belong together in a way that surprises people the first time.

Step 6: Build the Wet Mixture in One Bowl

Whisk both sugars into the cooled brown butter until the mixture looks like wet sand, then add the eggs one at a time, whisking well after each so the batter stays emulsified. Stir in the sour cream and vanilla until smooth. There is no creaming step and no mixer required, because the browned butter has already given up the water that creaming would normally aerate.

Step 7: Fold, Fill and Arrange

Add the dry ingredients to the wet in two additions and fold with a spatula only until the last streak of flour disappears, since overmixing here produces a tough, rubbery crumb. Fold in the diced pear, scrape the batter into a buttered and parchment-lined nine-inch springform pan, and smooth the top. Fan the pear slices over the surface in overlapping circles, press them lightly into the batter, then scatter the reserved whole hazelnuts and the turbinado sugar across the top.

Step 8: Bake at 350°F for Fifty Minutes

Bake for fifty to sixty minutes, checking at fifty with a skewer into the center, which should come out with a few moist crumbs rather than wet batter. If the top is browning too quickly at the forty minute mark, lay a sheet of foil loosely over it and carry on. Cool in the pan for twenty minutes before releasing the ring, then cool completely on a rack, because a warm cake of this density will tear if you rush it.

Step 9: Cut It With a Serrated Blade

Wait until the cake is fully at room temperature, then cut it with a long serrated knife using a gentle sawing motion and almost no downward pressure, letting the teeth work through the fruit and nuts rather than compressing the crumb. Wipe the blade between slices so sticky pear does not drag through the next cut. Our 8" Damascus Bread Knife crosses a nine-inch cake in a single uninterrupted pass, and why that length matters is explained in Which Bread Knife Length Works Best for Home Bakers.

Bake It the Day Before You Need It

Cakes built on browned butter and sour cream are noticeably better on day two, as the fat redistributes through the crumb and the pear releases a little moisture back into the cake around it. Wrap it well once it is cool and leave it on the counter rather than in the refrigerator, which dries baked goods out faster than most people realize. Handling fruit quickly and cleanly is the part of baking that separates a pleasant afternoon from a frustrating one, and Why Paring Knives Are Essential for Fruit Prep is a useful companion to this one.