Chocolate cake with sunken festive pears

Method

1. Pour the wine, sugar, cinnamon stick, ginger and nutmeg into a saucepan. Add the pears. Cover the saucepan with a snug-fitting lid and poach for about 15 minutes. They will still be a little hard but they will soften as the chocolate cake bakes. If you are planning to simply eat the pears at this stage, poach them for about 30 minutes altogether, depending on how hard the pears were to begin. They should hold their shape but be soft enough to eat with a spoon.

2. Preheat your oven to 180°C and line a 2lb loaf tin with parchment.

3. Gently melt the chocolate and butter together in a heavy-based saucepan, set aside.

4. Whisk the egg yolks and sugar until pale and creamy. Add this to the chocolate. Stir in the ground almonds until everything is combined.

5. Whisk the egg whites in a clean bowl until stiff. Add a large spoon of the egg white to the chocolate mixture then gently fold in the rest until combined.

6. Scoop the mixture into your prepared tin. Sit the pears upright into the mixture.

7. Bake for about 40 minutes until the batter in the cake is baked through.