cake poire belle helene

there is no such cake. this is simply what happens when you get crazy excited about a dessert and you must make a ton of it. the poire belle helene is a pear poached in syrup infused with vanilla bean, lemon zest and cinnamon stick. and then drenched in a ridiculous chocolate sauce. how could i resist? of course the whole thing was too much for two, so i decided to dress up the leftovers.

first i made the pears according to tyler florence's recipe. sadly, it's not one i recommend. the pears are magnificent, yes, but the chocolate recipe is off: it produces a much larger quantity than what is needed for 6 pears, and it's too thin for my taste. next time i will use the recipe on delia online.

the next day the sauce had hardened and so it was impossible to use as intended. i whipped it up, as you would a ganache, and used it to fill a red velvet cake, along with my go-to lemon whipped cream, and the perfumed pears atop. for the cake i followed paula deen's recipe. the only modification i made to it was to replace two tablespoons of the sugar quantity with cocoa. i like that it has a whole cup of buttermilk, it's a fluffy cake with a tender crumb. for the lemon whipped cream all you need is 2 cups heavy cream beaten stiff, then 2 tb confectioner's sugar, then 4 - 5 tb lemon curd mixed in, according to your taste. check out celia's microwave lemon curd, it's bound to make your life easier. to assemble the cake i doused it well and good with poaching syrup, then filled it. then i ploped the pears on top and so i stumbled unto a great dessert. it would have been even better to have more pears under the whipped cream. i think next time i'll skip the first scenario altogether and go for the cake straight away. the photos are half-assed because i didn't think i would actually use them. i honestly did not expect it to be so good, it was just leftover pears, for crying out loud. i love it when a shot in the dark pans out.