Pears, Pizzuta Almonds and Vanilla Cake

Big storm today, lots of rain and a sudden temperature drop. Automn is here and I decided it was time for my pears, vanilla and Sicilian almonds cake for my SIcilian dessert recipes series.
Enojy it for breakfast with a good "caffe e latte" or a vanilla flavoured black tea.
Ingredients:

2 pears
100 g finely grounded toasted almonds with the peal on
120 g sugar + 2 tablespoons (to sprinkle over the cake before baking)
110g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder for cakes
2 eggs
60 ml milk
1 paste of one vanilla pod
80 g butter + 20 g extra butter (to be divided into flakes to put over the cake before baking)
a pinch of salt

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 170C°.
Melt the butter in a saucepan over very low heat and let it cool down.
Clean and slice the pears into thin slices.
In a large bowl mix: ground almond, flour, yeast, sugar and a pinch of salt, mix all ingredients well.
In another bowl put: the beaten eggs, milk, vanilla and melted butter (80 g), mix well and add them to the other ingredients mixing well until they are well blended.
Grease and flour a baking tray (26 cm in diameter), pour the mixture and place the slices of pears over it. Sprinkle with sugar (the 2 tablespoons you set aside), the butter in small knobs (about 20 g) and the vanilla pod you scraped earlier for the paste. Bake in preheated oven for about 30 minutes.
I served it with a spoon of peach marmalade I made last summer.