Esther's gingerbread two ways

On Saturday I went to make a pear and ginger upside-down cake that I'd seen a delicious-looking recipe for in the last few weeks but I was unable to find the recipe. I trawled through blogs I might have seen it on and flicked through books and magazines I'd read recently in the hope of finding it... but it's still a mystery and I'm thinking I may have just dreamt about it.

Instead, I used "Ester's gingerbread" from Ruth Pretty with a few tweaks to create what I had in my mind. It really is THE BEST gingerbread. Lovely and moist and equally good with a chunk of creamy blue or in this case, pears, walnuts and a spoonful of softly whipped cream.

I made the full recipe (nearly half a block of butter...eeek) but distributed it into two loaf tins instead of one as per the recipe. In one (baking paper-lined) tin I spread a mixture of 25g butter and 50g brown sugar (melted gently together over a low heat), 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts, and two finely-sliced, peeled and quartered buerre bosc pear.

Although the upside-down brown sugar bit went slightly toffee-ish, it made a delicious winter pudding with a little cream on the side. It was even better the next day reheated with a drizzle of golden syrup.

For the second loaf, I poured the remaining batter into the tin and dotted in a cup or so of diced pear. This made a good "tin-filler" and lasted several days as a treat to have with a cup of tea.