HCB: Sicilian Pistachio Cake

I love cookbooks. I have a massive selection of cookbooks—over 100 (on the last inventory). I’m one of those “PEOPLE” that mosey over to the local bookstore, pick up about ten books, sit at the café and drink tons of overpriced coffee, look through them, mark them, and then run back home to order them on Amazon.

“Hi, my name is Monica, and I’m a cookbook-a-holic.”

So, when I picked up Rose’s latest book, Heavenly Cake, I thought it must be good; I had The Cake Bible from ages ago.  And as I sat there browsing, I opened it up and landed on this specific recipe.

Background information: I love nuts (the eating kind, not the people kind). I mean all kinds of nuts: walnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, cashews, peanuts, etc. I don’t think there is a nut that I don’t like.  

Pistachios? Well, pistachios are my holy grail.

I would live on them, except for the fact that they are EXPENSIVE little suckers. We splurge at least once a month, buy a big bag (2–3 pounds), and keep a tight leash on our consumption (we want to make them last as long as possible).

When I saw this in the book, I bought it immediately. Rose’s, so that you know, I paid the inflated price of $40 at the bookstore!

You had me at “Sicilian Pistachios.”

When I joined the HCB group, I looked over their already-baked cake list and hoped they had not gotten to this one. And Yeah! For me, they had not. I requested it with Marie and bang! There it was, in the calendar.

Now, I had to wait.

I had planned to order the pistachios from Rose’s recommended supplier. But last week, we had family visiting, and between feeding and hosting over 20 people, this planned task fell down the list, and before I knew it, it was too late to do so. So, I went to the local Middle Eastern markets and was not satisfied with their selections, which were in-shell pistachios. I knew I needed to blanch them beforehand, which would be an extra step, and I did not want to be sitting there opening them one by one, too. I arrived at Whole Foods and found a bag of shell pistachios from California – Score!

I knew the cake was easy to make, so I was not worried about time. But I had to do the extra step of blanching my pistachios beforehand, so on Saturday, I started early. Have you ever blanched nuts? TWO WORDS: Nasty business. It took forever to clean them up, and once that was done, I put them aside to let them dry up for up to 3 hours, as recommended.

We went house shopping.

I returned six hours later, with no new house on the horizon and still-moist pistachios.

Since I knew I needed to pulse them with the sugar, I was afraid that if there were even a bit of wetness, I would end up with a paste. So, I decided to pop them in the oven and give them a quick toast.  Problem solved.

Then I sat down and selected the greenest of the bunch to top the cake. The others went with the sugar in the food processor for a quick mix-up.

The cake batter took less than 10 minutes to put together. After weeks of light, airy cakes, this dense texture was a nice surprise. It really needed to be spread out and smoothed with a spatula in my baking pan, which was encircled with my brand-new cake strip. Major bowl/spatula-licking action took place afterward.

Mine took 45 minutes to bake to a golden brown. It rested for 10 minutes and then popped out of the pan flippy-floppy onto the rack to cool off.

And onward to tackle the Golden Neoclassic Buttercream.

I went into this step a bit apprehensively. Buttercream and I have a love-hate relationship (sort of like piping). So, I took a couple of deep breaths, read the instructions one.more.time, and carried on.

I used light corn syrup because I was too lazy to hunt for golden syrup. I also used lime juice instead of lemon because that is what I had at hand (please refer to the lazy factor above). I also ensured I had all the ingredients lined up and ready.

And even with all that prep work, I messed up on the hot syrup.

By the time I realized it, I was too late. I was pouring my previously beat yolks in a steady stream with my handheld mixer and noted that I was making cotton candy.

Uh-oh.

My syrup had reached the “hardball stage” while cooking, so I had bits of hard sugar specks in my buttercream.

Do I start over? 

I would have, except that I had two eggs left.

I decided to keep on and see the results with the butter incorporated, and if it were too much of an issue, I would redo it.

After beating the butter in, it came together as it should (with my hard sugar specks), and I decided it was good enough. Instead of pistachio essence, I added almond extract and omitted the vanilla the recipe calls for.

It tasted scrumptious.

Before I frosted the cake, I placed the buttercream in the refrigerator to cool it, then spent 15 minutes trying to get as smooth a surface as possible. It went back in the refrigerator while I diced up my pistachio stash for the topping. All the while thinking, "NEXT TIME, ORDER THE SLIVER PISTACHIOS AHEAD OF TIME!"

I took the cake out and sprinkled my slivered pistachios all over it. Was it as brilliantly green and spectacular as Matthew’s? No, but I was totally satisfied with it.

And so was everyone else.

Tom: “Much denser than the previous cakes; I like their nutty texture. This one stays here; no sharing!"

Sister: “I like the flavor, but it’s too dry for my taste.”

Mom: “It’s so good. I love the flavor and texture; it's perfect as a coffee cake, and I'm afraid I must disagree with your sister; it’s not dry at all, at least not my piece. You are giving me some to take home, right?”

Me: I really like this cake. I love the pistachio flavor, even though I would have loved it to be a bit more pronounced. Next time, I’m going to use pistachio flour and see if that would change the flavor or texture and give it a bigger pistachio punch.

This one goes on regular rotation for future baking.

And if you love pistachios as much as I do and cannot wait to bake this cake, you can find the full recipe here