New recipe--Carmelized Pear Skillet Cake

I promised an elegant fate for the Harry & David pears, here is how I used one last night.

Carmelized Pear Skillet Cake
Oh wow, this cake is good. The juice from the pears mixes with the sugar and butter and creates a beautiful natural caramel sauce. This cake tastes as good as it looks. Once you make this, you'll come up with reasons to have potlucks so you can share this with friends.

1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 large pear, sliced very thin, at least 26 slices

1 yellow cake mix
1 cup soy milk or regular milk

Preheat oven at 350.
You are going to cook the whole cake in the skillet that you use on the stove, so start with a 12 inch skillet.

Melt the butter over medium/low heat, add the brown sugar and cook for about a minute. Arrange the pears over the butter/sugar in a pretty circular pattern. Use more pear slices vs. less, it's ok if they overlap. The more pears you use, the prettier the top looks later.

Lower the heat to just barely above "low" and let it cook while you mix the batter. Mix the soy milk and cake mix for 2 minutes with an electric mixer. Remove the skillet from heat. Spoon the batter carefully over the pears, trying to not disturb your pear pattern. You want the batter to cover the pears, maybe leaving just a little bit showing around the edges. The batter will spread some during baking.

Bake for 24 - 26 minutes, the top (soon to be the bottom) will be slightly browned.

The hardest part of this recipe is finding a platter big enough to hold this cake. I used one of those plastic party platters that's about 18 inches across.

When the skillet is cool enough to handle, put the platter over the pan and flip the whole cake onto the platter. If some pears are left in the pan, pull them out and arrange them in the blank spaces.

Serve same day if possible. This cake looks & tastes nice the next day as well, but because of the fruit, is really best fresh.