The week starts here...

and on this grey, cold and rainy Monday morning, I delivered these Little Pear & Hazelnut Cakes to the warm and welcoming fug of the Coffee Tree!

They are layers of toasted hazelnut sponge with tiny dice of fresh pear stirred through the cake mixture....sandwiched with a vanilla cream cheese frosting and no-sugar pear conserve and finished with a little more frosting and a toasted whole hazelnut!

I adore hazelnuts....but, bizarrely, they're not everyone's cup of tea baking-wise. So I thought that 'pear-ing' (sorry!!) them with this gently flavoured fruit might help them in the popularity stakes today! I think they look beautiful...and the sponge offcuts tasted so good that I had to make sure that I gave them to the birds very quickly before I wolfed down the lot! So a good start.
This is something that doesn't happen very often, but as it's my 50th Baking Brownies for Mozart post...
Paul insisted on taking a picture of me with my creations. And I'm posting it to keep him happy!

I'd love you to come into my kitchen and share a large cup of hot tea with me...but this may be the nearest we get for a while!
Happy Monday...xoxo