German Pear Cake

     Recently, I took a day trip from Stuttgart to Ulm, on the border of Bavaria. Aside from the Ulmer Münster, one of the main attractions in Ulm, at least for me, is the bread museum. Yes, you read that correctly, they have a whole museum devoted to the history of bread. It may sound random, but keep in mind that bread has been humanity's main food source throughout  most of history. It really is an interesting museum, but it would be a lot better if they had actual bread there for sampling or purchase. They do, however, have cookbooks, so you can go make your own bread. And you know how excited I get when anyone encourages people to make their own bread. So I decided that I deserve a souvenir for myself too, and I picked out a cookbook full of Swabian baked goods, entitled Schwäbisch Backen. One of my projects over the next year or so is to translate, convert, and share each and every one of the recipes in this book, and there's a lot. It's no small undertaking, and I hope it doesn't qualify as plagiarism. I'm just genuinely really excited to try all of these things and share them with an audience who probably would otherwise never hear of these delicious treats. Plus, making German recipes while I'm in Germany solves my problem of never finding all my usual ingredients.
     For my first project, I chose a pear cake. I initially chose this because I never know what to do with pears. If I try to eat them raw, I don't think they taste like anything. However, in this recipe, they're incredibly juicy and sweet. Then in the middle of making it, I realized that this is very similar to my favorite thing ever, German cheesecake. It's a little different, but it has Quark, the magic ingredient. If you look hard, you can find that in the US, so I refuse to provide a substitution for it. The crust dough for this is also really good. I think I'm going to experiment with using it in some American recipes, because it's so much less finicky than pie crust. So basically, this cake/cheesecake is amazing, second only to the original German cheesecake.

INGREDIENTS:
Shortcrust:
1/2 cup sugar
1 3/4 sticks butter, softened
1 egg
pitch of salt
pitch of baking powder
2 1/2 cups flour

Cake:
4 pears, at least quartered
juice of 1 lemon
3/4 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
pitch of salt
1 cup sour cream
1/3 cup quark
1 cup crème fraîche

DIRECTIONS:
1. It's best to prepare the crust dough a few hours early, chill it in the fridge, then take it out 30 minutes before use. To make it, beat the butter, sugar, egg, and salt until fluffy. then gradually add the dry ingredients. Mix it with a machine or by hand, but it does need a little bit of hand kneading at the end. It should come together nicely.

2. Preheat the oven to 400. Butter and flour a 12-inch springform pan. Peal and cut the pears, coating them with lemon juice to keep them looking fresh.

3. Roll out the crust dough and press it into the bottom and up the sides of the pan. Unfortunately, I don't have a rolling pin here, so that's why there are thumbprints in mine. Gotta do what you gotta do.
Then, place the pear pieces to cover the bottom of the crust. Think of it as a pear upside-down cheesecake with a crust. That's really the best way I can describe it.

4. Carefully separate the eggs. Beat the yolks with the sugar, salt, vanilla, sour cream, quark, and crème fraîche until perfectly smooth.

5. In a chilled, metal bowl, beat the egg whites with a little lemon juice until you get soft peaks. I will never again attempt to do this by hand. Next time, I'll walk next door and borrow a mixer. I dot them about 80% there before my arm died and I just called it a day, but it worked.

Fun fact: The German word for whipped egg whites is "Eischnee" or "egg snow." Cute, and logical!

6. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter. Then pour it all over the pears into the crust and bake for about 35 minutes. I still haven't gotten the hang of my German oven, that has a bunch of weird settings with funny symbols, so the the very top of my cake got a little dark, but it was cooked perfectly. Don't be alarmed when pear juice stars oozing out when you cut it. Or if you're really patient, cool it in the fridge for a few hours before serving.

Enjoy, and stay tuned for more German specialties!