This is a great recipe to use your fresh ripe pears. I was fortunate this fall season to receive a box from a friend of mine who has pear trees in the backyard. I made a few recipes using the pears, and this one, a chocolate pear cake is delightful. The flavor improves by the next day as the pear juices continue to permeate through the chocolate cake and is a nice dessert finish to an autumn meal.

This is a translation and an adaptation from Lecker.de's Birne Helene-Kuchen recipe. I removed a few ingredients and used a container of quark in place of Schlagsahne. (My directions below are not a direct translation of Lecker's recipe, rather describes my procedure.)

Suitable for a 9x13 rectangular baking pan. Ingredients are by weight. Working with European recipes requires a kitchen scale.

Schokoladen Birnen Helene-Kuchen
Chocolate Pear Helene-Cake

1 8oz container of Vermont Farm & Cheese Company's Quark (as a substitute you can use an equivalent amount of strained ricotta, creme fraiche, or sour cream)
Approximately 4 ripe pears: peeled, cored, and halved
2 8oz bars of dark chocolate, chopped (reserve 1/3 of the chocolate)
175g unsalted organic butter
5 organic eggs
1 package of Dr Oetker's Vanilla Sugar
1 pinch of salt
200g organic sugar
250g all purpose flour
1TB baking powder
powdered sugar to top (after cooling)

Butter and flour the baking pan.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a separate bowl mix the flour and baking powder.

In a mixing bowl blend together eggs, quark, vanilla sugar, salt, and sugar until it becomes light and fluffy.

Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Pour the butter over the chopped chocolate  let 1/3 of the chopped chocolate remain to the side. Let the chocolate sit in the warm butter until it melts. Let it cool slightly. Slowly pour the chocolate and butter mixture into the egg mixture while blending low to medium speed. Slowly add the flour and baking powder. Pour the batter into the baking pan. Top with the remaining chopped chocolate. Add the pears in rows across the pan, with the cored area face down. Gently place the pear into the batter. As the cake bakes the batter will rise and cover part of the pears. Do not push the pear into the batter.

Bake for 35-45 minutes. (Check 10 minutes to the end of baking time). The pears are moist and will release their juices into the cake. When the edges of the cake have gently pulled away from the sides of the pan and the toothpick comes out clean it's finished. If testing with a toothpick, avoid testing the areas on or around the pears.

Enjoy!

Lecker suggests serving it with an apricot jelly and sprigs of mint. I'm sure that would be delicious!