A. K. Larkwood

About A. K. Larkwood

A. K. Larkwood studied English at St John’s College, Cambridge. Since then, she has worked in higher education & media relations, and is now studying law. She lives in Oxford, England, with her wife and a cat. Her debut novel, The Unspoken Name, was be published by Tor in 2020 and is out now in hardback, and in paperback on 4th February, 2021.

For our #CymeraAdvent calendar, A. K. Larkwood shares one of her favourite recipes - the perfect winter treat to accompany a good read.

SPICED PEAR AND BLACKBERRY PUDDING

(adapted from Smitten Kitchen’s Magic Apple Plum Cobbler)

One for the deeps of winter, when the sun shows up for five minutes in a pass-agg sort of way around 1 o’clock and you need some way to cheer yourselves up. This pudding is infinitely forgiving. It uses one bowl and one dish and it does not require you to have eggs in the house. But it is definitely not a tragic disappointment of the “microwave mug cake” variety. You end up with this unbeatable combination of soft sponge, crunchy-chewy edges and slightly caramelised baked fruit which is just unfair given that it takes about five minutes to put together. Once you have learned this recipe you have infinite power.

Hot tip: pear and blackberry is a good combination, but you can use whatever fruit you have.

Serves four, or two now and two for breakfast.

Ingredients:

80g butter

140g plain flour

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

Freshly ground nutmeg to taste

100g caster sugar

2 tsp baking powder

Good pinch of salt

180 ml milk

4 pears (tinned is fine)

Handful of blackberries (frozen is fine)

2 tbsp granulated or demerara sugar

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 C.

Put the butter in a medium-sized metal or ceramic baking dish, and put it in the oven so the butter can melt (about 5 minutes).

While you wait, peel the pears, halve them and cut out the cores. If you have tinned pears you don’t need to do this, but give them a good drain-off so they’re not too damp.

Stir together the flour, spices, caster sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl, add the milk and mix together. You will end up with something like pancake batter.

Remove the dish from the oven and pour the batter straight in on top of the melted butter. Don’t stir it, and don’t worry that it looks like a bit of a mess. It’s fine. It’s all meant to happen this way.

Place the pears on top of the batter, cut side down, roughly evenly spaced with a few centimetres between them. They’ll sink in a bit but again, it’s all good. If you have more pear halves than you need, don’t try to fit them all in, just eat the extras as a little treat.

Drop in the blackberries in the gaps between the pears. 

Sprinkle the granulated/demerara sugar over the top and put the whole thing in the oven. Bake for 30-40 minutes, until nice and golden-brown on top.

Let it cool for a bit before serving.

Find out more about A. K. Larkwood:

What if you knew how and when you will die?

Order A. K. Larkwood’s The Unspoken Name from Pan Macmillan or support our local bookshop Transreal Fiction - Scotland’s leading SciFi and Fantasy bookstore - in Edinburgh.

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