pistachio butter cake with lemon icing

pistachio butter cake with lemon icing

• 15 May 2023

With a trip to Venice on the horizon, I've been devouring Skye's McAlpine's book 'A Table in Venice'. Skye often features a pistachio butter cake on her instagram page and I've been trying to track down a copy of the recipe. After scouring the internet I managed to find the recipe online. The recipe calls for Sicilian pistachio paste which I wasn't able to find but instructions to make your own are included in the recipe. If you can find the Sicilian pistachio paste then just add 120g to the creamed butter and sugar. 

Here's the recipe for you which makes a small bundt cake. It's adapted from a recipe which was originally published in the The Sunday Times Magazine. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Pistachio butter cake with lemon icing

Pistachio butter

80g unsalted, roasted pistachios
40g white chocolate
1 tbsp caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Cake
125g caster sugar

125g room temperature unsalted butter

2 large eggs 
150g self-raising flour sifted with a pinch salt

100g plain yoghurt

Icing 
100g icing sugar
5g melted butter
Juice of 1 lemon 
A handful of pistachios, coarsely chopped
 
Method
Heat the oven to 180°C, conventional. Grease and flour a 5 cup bundt tin. Place in the fridge until needed.

In a small food processor, combine the pistachios with the white chocolate, 1 tbsp of caster sugar and the vanilla extract. Blend for 10 minutes or so until very creamy, occasionally stopping the machine to scrape the sides with a spatula. (Mine never reached this stage - it was more like a pistachio marzipan)

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream 125g of caster sugar with the butter, then add the pistachio butter and beat until smooth. Slowly beat in the eggs and mix until well combined. Stir in the flour in batches alternating with the yoghurt  and beat until you have a smooth batter. If the batter seems a little dry, then add an extra tablespoon or 2 of milk or yoghurt.

Spoon the batter into the bundt tin and smooth the top then bake on the centre rack of the preheated 180°C oven for 45 minutes, before covering with a sheet of foil and then bake for a further 10-15 minutes or until the cake is lightly golden on top and a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the middle.

Remove the cake from the oven and cool on a baking rack for 10-15 minutes before turning the cake out of the tin. Once cooled, make the glaze. 

Sift the icing sugar into a small bowl, whisk in the melted butter and sufficient lemon juice until the icing becomes pourable: it should be the consistency of runny honey. Spoon the glaze over the cake allowing it to drip down the sides, then sprinkle over a few chopped pistachios for decoration. Leave to cool completely before serving.

Pretty easy to make and with a perfect crumb.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian