pistachio Archives - Page 2 of 3

Easy Pistachio Cake

1|06|2024

This Easy Pistachio Cake is the most amazing thing I baked recently. With a hint of rosewater and a beautiful crumb, owing to the addition of nutty pistachios and almonds, this cake is a keeper. What makes it even more special is that there is no flour or butter in the cake. Just a handful of ingredients and a simple process to put together a treat as lovely as this one.

I have used a mix of pistachio and almond meal as I didn’t have enough pistachios at home. But you are free to be as creative as you like. You could make it with just the pistachios or sub any nut of your choice. Initially I wanted to decorate the cake with a ricotta frosting. Upon baking I felt that this Easy Pistachio cake was pure joy and needed nothing else. A dusting of icing sugar and some fresh raspberries to serve, that’s it!

If you love the combination of pistachio and rose, you will love my Rosewater Semolina Cake

Easy Pistachio Cake
Makes a 7 inch round cake

4 eggs, yolks and whites separated
3/4 cup granulated/castor sugar
1 tbsp rosewater (or use vanilla essence)
1 cup raw, shelled, pistachios, ground to a coarse meal
1/2 cup almond meal
icing sugar, to dust
fresh raspberries, to serve

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F). Grease the base and sides of a 7 inch round pan and line the base with baking paper.

In a medium bowl, place the egg yolks, sugar and rosewater together and whisk until combined. Add in the pistachio meal and almond meal and mix well. Mixture will be quite thick.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks. Fold in the egg yolk mixture, a little at a time, trying not to deflate the egg whites until the entire mixture has been combined.

Pour into the prepared cake pan. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until cooked through (do not overcook or it will turn out dry) a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake, comes out clean.
Remove from the oven, leave aside for 10 minutes. Run a blunt knife around the edges to loosen the cake. Gently turn onto a wire rack to cool completely. Once cooled to room temperature, dust with icing sugar.

Pistachio Cake with Rosewater Buttercream

26|06|2019

Who else is not a big fan of winter? This year it has been especially cold in Sydney and the rains haven’t made it any easier. I can’t wait for Spring and it’s abundant produce. Meanwhile, there are apples, oranges, pears, pomegranates and persimmons that I’ve already baked with (you may have seen them on Instagram) and now I’m turning back to my favourite cosy flavours. Pistachio and Rosewater. I have a few different cakes with the same combo already on the blog but seriously it’s always so good and there is always another new version waiting to be created.

This cake is an absolute celebration of pistachios. There is a lot of it in the cake, hence the natural green hue. Also it can be easily made into a gluten free version by substituting plain flour for gluten free flour.

The buttercream is not essential but adds a nice, creamy and floral touch to the dense cake. My husband avoids the frosting so he scrapes it off but said that he still loved the cake just the way it was.

Pistachio Cake with Rosewater Buttercream
Makes a 7 inch round cake

220 g unsalted butter
3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp castor sugar
4 eggs, lightly beaten
120 g almond meal (ground almonds)
120 g pistachio meal (ground pistachios)
50 g (approx 1/2 cup) plain flour
1 tbsp grated orange zest (optional)

Rosewater Buttercream

125 g unsalted butter
1 and 1/2 cup icing sugar
1 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp rosewater
pink gel food colour

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (160 degrees C for fan forced ovens. Grease the base and sides of a 7 inch round pan and line the base with baking paper.

Beat the butter an sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the ground nuts, flour and orange zest. Stir well to mix until combined.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Remove from oven, leave aside for 5 minutes, then gently turn the cake onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Once cool, pipe or spread with rosewater buttercream. Enjoy!

To make the rosewater buttercream, Using an electric mixer, beat butter in a bowl until pale. Gradually add icing sugar mixture and milk, beating constantly until combined.
Add the rosewater and pink food colour and mix till uniform.

Rosewater Tartlets With Pomegranate And Salted Pistachios

18|01|2018

What makes a dessert totally irresistible? Well, if you ask me, it is a lot of things put together in perfect harmony. Taste, colour, flavour, texture and so on. When we think of desserts, we automatically think of sweet sensations in our mouth but did you ever wonder why a lot of recipes often include a pinch of salt? Salt is supposed to not only enhance the sweetness and uplift the experience but it brings out the existing flavours in the most delicious way. Just like salted caramel tastes better than caramel!

A few months ago I created a few salted dessert recipes for a magazine that I thought were too delicious not to share over here. This one is my favourite because it involves rosewater (obviously) with lots of crunchy surprises from the fresh pomegranate arils and the pistachios and it looks pretty too. As a little twist to the already amazing tasting dessert, I added salted pistachios instead of the plain ones. Sometimes a tiny little addition or substitute in a recipe can become a game changer. You really need to taste this one. It’s something very, very special.

If you want to make one single tart instead smaller tartlets, you can of course do that. It will yield an 8 inch round tart. The pastry or base here is baked while the filling is not. By all means you can use a no-bake crust using cookies or even a store bought pastry shell if that makes things easier for you.

Rosewater Tartlets With Pomegranate And Salted Pistachios
Makes 6 tartlets

For the pastry
1 cup plain flour
1/4 cup, icing sugar mixture
100 g chilled butter, roughly chopped
1 egg yolk

For The filling
150 ml heavy cream
250 g white chocolate, roughly chopped
1 tsp rosewater
1-2 drops pink food colouring (optional)
fresh pomegranate, to serve
dried edible rose petals, to serve
salted pistachios, to serve

To make the pastry

Process the flour, icing sugar and butter in a food processor until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and process until mixture just comes together. Gently knead on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Shape into a disc. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 15 minutes to rest.

Roll the dough on a lightly floured surface to a 3 mm-thick disc. Line six, 7 cm fluted tart pans with a removable base with the pastry. Trim edges. Place in the fridge for 30 minutes to rest.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Place the tart pans on a baking tray. Line with baking paper and fill with pastry weights or dried rice or beans. Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes.

Remove paper and weights and bake for a further 15 minutes or until pastry is light golden. Remove from oven and let cool inside cases to room temperature.

To make the filling

Meanwhile, bring cream to the boil in a medium saucepan. Remove from heat. Stir in chocolate and rosewater. Stir until chocolate is melted and smooth.

Add food colouring and blend well. Allow to cool. Pour cooled white chocolate ganache over cooked tart bases. Place in the refrigerator to set completely.

When serving, top with fresh pomegranate seeds and salted pistachios.

Lemon, Chocolate And Pistachio Muffins

7|03|2015

Delicious Pistachio Muffins with a lemon cake base, dipped in chocolate and topped with ground pistachios.

‘You can lift up the lids now’ the voice echoed across the large hall as anxious hands moved in unison. I said a quick prayer ‘Please let there be lemon…please..please!’ With bated breath I peered inside.
There was lemon! A whole lemon! Bright yellow, gleaming in the light. But..there was a problem! There was chocolate. As well. Now what! I was in a fix. Without a doubt Chocolate is my favorite ingredient but I wasn’t expecting it. It just seemed too unlikely to have such an easy and versatile ingredient to work with. I ran through all the chocolate recipes in my mind..cooking times, accompanying ingredients and such. I looked at the mammoth clock hanging on the wall. 50 minutes to go. How on earth was I going to make my famous chocolate ginger torte in such a limited time? Show skill..show technique..understanding of flavors..multitask…was all over my mind. Scaling down a recipe? How would I make it look pretty inside a ramekin..Oh no! Panic. I looked around. Gigantic saucepans….large baking pans. A single serve dessert was my only option but in monster baking gear..how? More panic.
’30 minutes to go’..the voice sent a chill down my spine. Nope. Sorry Chocolate! I decided to stick with Lemon. Lemon and Meringue…Yesss! Meringue spells technique. Add more elements. Lemon Curd…Lemon custard…Candied Lemon. I leaped forward and grabbed a zester.

Well, does this sound like the sets of a reality show? A cooking competition, maybe? For some of us who love cooking/baking and cooking shows, to be on one is like a dream. Except this was real. Except it was turning into a nightmare. Nothing quite I had pictured before. And every movement..every expression..helplessness being captured on what looks like a hundred professional cameras. This was many moons ago but truly the experience of a life time. Cooking in the comfort of your own kitchen is different from cooking for the first time in a commercial kitchen under the watchful eyes of professionals and celebrities. Anyway, I did put up a decent dessert that I saw the staff and crew photograph even on mobile phones. But maybe that was not enough.Maybe things would be different if I had some control on my nerves. Maybe I was always meant to be behind the lenses. The last one actually, I am sure of. I can see things through my camera that I may not notice otherwise.

Back to the present, I totally loved how these muffins tasted. They are lemon muffins with thier tops covered in dark chocolate ganache and ground pistachios.The citrus is not overpowering, neither is the chocolate. They are in complete harmony while the pistachios add life and texture to these muffins.To be honest, I wasn’t very happy with the muffin batter. While spooning them into the muffin cases I felt that they might turn out dry just as they did. If you have an alternate lemon muffin recipe..feel free to go with that. If you are using this recipe, take care not to over-bake. They taste amazing but are not as moist as some of the other muffins I have made before. I am a bit of a perfectionist so perhaps I could be a tad bit critical. My family loved them. The combination of lemon, chocolate and pistachio however, is sensational. Which is why I am sharing this recipe. I would probably add sour cream or yogurt next time instead of milk to test them out.

So, when life gives you lemons, make sure it doesn’t give you Chocolate!
If it does, well, you know now what to do:-)

Lemon, Chocolate And Pistachio Muffins (lemon muffin recipe adapted from here)
Makes 8 large muffins

2 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 tbsp lemon zest
1 1/4 cups milk
1 egg, lightly beaten
90 g butter, melted
chocolate ganache, to coat
ground pistachios, to coat

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (160 degrees C for fan-forced). Lightly grease a 12-hole, 1/3-cup capacity non-stick muffin pan.

Sift flour into a large bowl. Add caster sugar and 1 tablespoon of lemon rind and stir to combine. Make a well in the centre. Combine milk, egg and butter in a jug. Pour milk mixture into the well. Using a large metal spoon, stir until just combined (don’t over-mix).

Spoon mixture into muffin holes until three-quarters full. Bake for 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow to cool in pan for 1 minute. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool. Once cooled dip the tops into chocolate ganache and then onto a plate of ground pistachios. Leave aside for 15 minutes to set.

Dark Chocolate Ganache

110 g dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup heavy cream

Heat the heavy cream in a small saucepan. Before it reaches boiling point, remove from heat, add the chocolate. Leave aside for 10 minutes. Mix till chocolate is well blended and smooth. Alternately, you could place the cream and chocolate together in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for a few seconds.