Pear, chocolate and hazelnut cake

L Mama made an awesome apple cake over Xmas last year in Pittsburgh. She kindly sent through the recipe and I'd been meaning to make it for a while.

I dug it out tonight and made a few change, swapping it for ingredients I had in the kitchen which turned out quite well. It's amazing that this cake which has no butter tastes so moist.

Here's the original recipe

1973 Teddie's Apple Cake

All purpose flour, 3 cup plus more for dusting cake-pan & butter for greasing pan
veg oil, 1 cup
sugar, 2 cup
eggs, 3 large
salt, 1 tsp
cinnamon, 1 tsp

baking soda, 1 tsp
vanilla, 1 tsp
apples, 3 cup peeled, cored & thickly sliced tart apples [ like Honeycrisp or Granny Smith]
walnuts,1 cup chopped
raisins, 1 cup

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Butter and flour a 9-inch bundt/ring pan.
3. Beat the oil and sugar together in a mixer
4. Add the eggs and beat until the mixture is creamy.
5. Sift together flour, salt, cinnamon and baking soda. Stir into the batter.
6. Add the vanilla, apples, walnuts and raisins and stir.
7. Transfer the mixture to the prepared pan.
8. Bake for 1 h 15 min, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
9. Cool in the pan before turning out.
10. Serve at room temperature with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, if desired.

To make my variation, simply substitute the pear for the apple, 1/2 cup hazelhuts for the walnuts and 1/2 cup chocolate pieces for the raisins. It's quite sweet so you can also reduce the amount of sugar, say by half a cup.