Chestnut cake with pear

Cooked or roasted: chestnuts have always been my most favourite treat during my childhood and so they are nowdays. I haven't had chestnut puree for years meanwhile, so I bought a pack last weekend. Instead of serving it as vermicelles I decided to bake something with it. It was also a great opportunity to use some of the treasured chestnut flour. I also added some pears, and if pears, well then chocolate is also not far, right? To make the whole thing a little more exciting, I flavoured the cake with anise and orange. By the way, don't forget to serve a nice portion of beaten heavy cream with it! It's a must!

Ingredients:

for the cake:
100 g butter
100 g cane sugar 100 g chestnut puree
50 ml orange juice
zest of 1 orange
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ground anise
2 eggs
50 g ground hazelnut
50 g chestnut flour
50 g buckwheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 pears
for the glaze: 
20 g butter
50 ml milk
75 g dark chocolate

Preaheat the oven to 180°C. Beat butter with sugar until fluffy. Beat in the chestnut puree, orange juice and zest, vanilla extract, anise and the egg yolks. Peel pears and cut in about half a centimeter sized cubes. Sift chestnut and buckwheat flour among the baking powder on top of the batter and stir until it is mixed well. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold it into the batter. Finally stir in the pear and pour batter onto a 18 cm round baking form. Bake cake for 40-50 minutes. For the glaze melt all the ingredients over low heat and stir until it is well mixed. Pour it over the cold cake and decorate with coarsly chopped hazelnut.