Chocolate and pear cake

I bought The Fairtrade Cookbook last week. The first recipe that caught my eye was a 'cookie pizza' complete with chocolate spread, peanut butter, marshmallows, and chocolate eggs. A chocoholics feast, however I decided to go for the slightly more modest 'Chocolate and pear cake'.

All set to make the cake, I'd creamed my butter and sugar, added the eggs, chopped up the pears, weighed the flour, and took the baking powder out of the cupboard... Empty. Not even a little bit left. It was wet and cold outside so I dash to the shops wasn't very appealing. I took the easier option and knocked on our (elderly) neighbour's door. After a quick explanation I was presented with a tub of baking powder, and sent on my way. The parting words being 'it's quite old'. Quite old it was. All I know is that it cost 23p - (it's about 75p nowadays).

With certain trepidation I put it in the oven anyway. The resulting cake was very chocolatly, and nice and moist, the pears levelled the chocolate and made sure it wasn't too rich. However, it was decidedly flat, I fear the baking powder wasn't quite what it used to be.

Sorry about the picture it was quite hard to get a good shot of it!