Honeyed pear and salted caramel cake

This cake is the perfect celebration cake, and definitely has that "wow" factor! I created the recipe for the engagement do of two close friends, based off each of their favourite flavours: one being pear, and the other being salted caramel. It went down a treat, and went on to become the flavour of their wedding cake, also which I made for them :) NB: This makes one, single layer cake. To make a single 3 layer cake, with buttercream between each layer, double the recipe and divide the cake mixture between 3x eight inch cake tins.

Ingredients

3	Pears (Main)
20 g	Unsalted butter
60 g	Runny honey
80 g	Unsalted butter
280 g	Caster sugar
240 g	Plain flour
1 Tbsp	Baking powder
¼ tsp	Salt
240 ml	Whole milk
½ tsp	Vanilla essence/extract
2 large	Eggs
500 g	Icing sugar
160 g	Unsalted butter
50 ml	Whole milk
3 Tbsp	Caramel sauce
0	Rock salt

Directions

1. Peel, core, and chop the pears into bite sized pieces, and place with 20g unsalted butter and 60g runny honey in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook until the pears are golden and caramelised and have soaked up all the liquid. Set aside.
2. Preheat the oven to 190c. Grease and line a cake tin with baking paper. Beat together 80g softened butter with the caster sugar, flour, baking powder and salt until they resemble fine breadcrumbs.
3. In a separate jug, whisk together the 240ml milk, vanilla and eggs. Add ½ of the liquid to the dry mix and beat to combine. Add the other half, and beat on a medium speed until the batter is smooth. Mix the pears through the batter and spoon into the cake tin.
4. Bake for 25-35 minutes. Baking time will vary between ovens, and the size of your cake tin, so keep an eye on the cake and test it with a knife to check it is cooked in the middle. Remove cake from oven, and allow to cook completely.
5. When the cake is completely cool, ice with the salted caramel buttercream. (NB: For the caramel, I use the Shott caramel syrup, but any good caramel sauce will do fine. Alternatively, you could make your own caramel). Soften your 160g butter, and beat with the icing sugar until sandy in consistency. Add the whole milk and beat until smooth and creamy, wiping down the sides with a spatula to make sure it's all combined. I really, really beat the buttercream for a reasonable amount of time, until it's super smooth and creamy. Add a small amount of caramel and rock salt, and beat to combine, and then taste. You can very slowly add more caramel and more salt until you're personally happy with the flavour.