I enjoy a good upside down cake. In fact, I even shared another pear upside down cake with you a few years ago. That one is delicious. Light and crumbly with a great texture. This one is very different. This is not light. It is dense and rich and drunken. And hey, sometimes you want your dessert to be a little drunk.

This beautiful cake was made by Jessica Yager at our last photo shoot. She gets all the credit for this creation, because I was busy making the crab cakes and fruit and nut balls and she handled this one for us. The recipe for this came from a lovely magazine she subscribes to, Gather. Gather is a relatively new journal filled with beautiful photography and recipes. Needless to say, we were thrilled with this recipe. It was a delicious as it was stunningly beautiful.

This is a cake that will make you snuggle into the winter months, instead of making you long for summer. It appreciates the winter pears and shows them off with lovely dried fruits that have been rejuvenated and revived with a nice hot soak in some whiskey.  Make this the next time you have company over. It might be a little awkward when everyone starts to moan with pleasure as they eat the cake, but you’ll get over it. I would recommend serving with a dollop of unsweetened whipped cream to offset the richness.

And don’t be scared by the directions when they tell you to use 3/4 stick of butter to butter the pan. (Granted, we only used 1/2 stick and it was more than sufficient. We may have been a little intimidated.) Coat all that brown sugar onto that butter. When the cake bakes and you flip it out of the pan, all that butter and brown sugar will have melted into the cake in a caramelized bliss.

Are you drooling yet? Maybe just a little?

From Gather Journal. This recipe was pulled from the Urban Outfitters blog.

The season’s bounty is on glorious display in this moist cake of juicy, nestled-together pear halves, and currants, figs, and cranberries that have taken a nice, long whiskey bath. We like to think of it as a lazy, fall fruit cake—short on effort, long on pleasure.

1⁄2 cup dried cranberries

2 Tbsp dried currants

4 dried figs

1 cinnamon stick

1⁄2 cup rye whiskey or bourbon

1 & 3⁄4 sticks butter, softened, divided

3⁄4 cup packed light brown sugar

3 pears, halved and cored

1 & 1⁄2 cups all-purpose flour

1 & 1⁄2 tsp baking powder

1⁄4 tsp salt

1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1⁄2 cup whole milk

1. Simmer cranberries, currants, and figs in whiskey with cinnamon stick 5 minutes then let stand 1 hour or overnight. Drain, reserving liquid. Slice figs in half.

2. Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly butter sides of a 9-inch cake pan. Smear a layer of butter using 3⁄4 of a stick on bottom of pan. Sprinkle evenly with brown sugar. Arrange pears, cut sides down, and dried fruit over sugar.

3. Stir together flour, baking powder, and salt.

4. Beat granulated sugar and remaining butter with an electric mixer until pale and light. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each. Beat in vanilla and reserved whiskey. On low speed, beat in half of flour mixture, then milk, then remaining flour. Gently spread batter over fruit.

5. Bake until cake is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Let cake stand in its pan set on a rack 10 minutes before inverting onto a plate to cool completely.