Harvest in the Orchard

Years ago I wrote an article into the AIM Magazine (Artisans in Miniatures). The topic was the harvest and it was about the orchard. I made this table to the article and filled it with food. The sturdy and ugly table serves well to the different dishes we prepare from apple and pear, such as apple pie, apple jam (yes, we prepared apple-pear jam in those years where we had only few apricots, as apricot produces well in every second year only), apple preserves, delicious pear-chocolate cake, which is very easy to make and you can serve it with clotted cream or ice cream or a mug of hot cocoa if the weather turns colder.

I spent almost 3 hours to look for a silicone mold to make dollheads to the stucco yesterday evening. Should I mention I didn't find it? But found this box, I made 3 years ago as a wall tackle study to my Inn to the Devoted Peasant Girl. You know by now what happened.... I spent the entire evening with painting and aging the outside of the box, look for some leftover aged timber from the Inn-project what I could use as timber here, collect some pottery, some of my leftover apples and pears, some old baskets I made and the new rusty bucket I bought in Paris. I found some eggs and eggshells too, the eggs are now in the hanging basket, the eggshells are in the rusty bucket, and I fine tuned the scene with some grapes and a carpet cleaner which was made by a friend of mine. 3,5 hours later the "Harvest scene" was born:

I don't know why, but I particularly like this darker one:

I brought it into my office this morning and when the weather is as cold and rainy as today I just have a look at it and it brings back happy childhood memories.

Finally here is the recipe of the chocolate-pear cake if you want to try. Everything is in metric:

Ingredients:
4 medium size, not too soft pears
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4 eggs (separate the egg yolks and whites)
pinch of salt
250 gr caster sugar (you can use demerara sugar too)
200 gr flour
1 tablespoons baking powder
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
8 tablespoons water

Peel the pears, cut them into halves and remove their cores. Cut chunkier slices from them and leave them rest in a bowl of water (mix the lemon juice into the water to avoid the discoloring of the fruit)
Put the pinch of salt into the eggwhites and beat it well until it will be perfectly hard (when you turn your bowl upside down and the beaten eggwhites remain in the bowl, it is perfect)
Mix together the 4 egg yolks with the cocoa powder, sugar and water (use a wooden spoon). Add the baking powder to your flour and mix your flour into your cocoa mix. Take 1/3 of your beaten eggwhites and mix it thoroughly into your cocoa-flour mix. It will ruin the eggwhites, but this is the only way to get a fluffy cake as end result. Then very carefully mix the remaining 2/3 into your mix too. This time be gentle as we have to keep as much air in the eggwhites as we can.
Place baking paper (silicone paper is the best) into your baking pan (the side of the pan must be at least 4 cm high, the size is about 22-24 cm x 30 cm) and pour your cake mix into the baking pan. Arrange the slices of pear in it then put it into preheat oven (175 Celsius) and bake for 45 minutes.
The pears will be sweet and soft and the cake will be pretty moisture around the pears.
You can add chocolate pieces into your mix too.

Good appetite!

See you soon,
Orsi