Pistachio Cake: cooking features, recipe and reviews

By tradition, cake is baked for any holiday . "Pancho", "Drunken Cherry", "Snickers", "Three Chocolates", "Tallinn" - who does not know these legendary desserts? However, if you are already a little tired of the classics, it is worth trying a new, more original and exotic taste that can become a real sensation in the festive menu - especially if you cook it from the usual, ordinary products. An excellent example of this dessert is pistachio cake with an amazing biscuit of natural green color.

Three-layer cake

This recipe will appeal to experienced housewives, wishing to please relatives and guests with a new masterpiece of culinary art. A delicate biscuit with freshly ground pistachios, adorned with delicious glaze of cream cheese and fresh blackberries will taste to all lovers of sweet.

By the time cooking takes about three hours, including baking biscuits and cooking the glaze. The set of products is designed for 12-14 servings.

Ingredients for a three-layer cake

For glaze you will need:

• 1.5 cups of sugar;
• A third of a cup of flour;
• 1.5 cups of milk;
• A third of a cup of cream;
• Three quarters of a cup of butter, brought to room temperature;
• 170 g of cream cheese, brought to room temperature;
• 3 tablespoons of honey;
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla (vanilla sugar) .

For biscuit:

• 1 cup of peeled, fried and salted pistachios;
• 3 cups of flour;
• A quarter cup of cornstarch;
• 1 tablespoon baking powder;
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda;
• Half a teaspoon of salt;
• 1 cup of butter;
• 2 cups of sugar;
• 1 chicken egg;
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla (vanilla sugar);
• One and a half cup of milk;
• 3 egg whites.

For decoration:

• blackberry;
• Pistachios.

How to make a glaze

Glaze is the main decoration of this dessert, so carefully follow the instructions - and your pistachio cake will be magnificent not only for taste, but also externally.

• Gently mix sugar with flour in a small saucepan, then enter milk and cream, whisk with a submerged blender. Cook the mixture over medium heat, stirring constantly until it thickens and begins to boil (about fifteen minutes after the start of heating). Pour the workpiece for glaze in a bowl and cover it with food film, pressing the film to the surface of the mixture. Put the bowl in the refrigerator for at least four hours, or better - at night. While the mixture will be cooled, bake a biscuit, from which the cake will be made. Pistachio sponge cake will be ready for assembly after cooling - while it will be baked, you can finish the preparation of the glaze.
• Place the cooled glaze mixture in the mixer bowl and whisk at low speed. Add butter one tablespoon at a time. Then, stir in the cream cheese, which must first be divided into six portions to ensure an even stirring. Increase the speed of the mixer and whisk until smooth. Add honey and vanilla sugar and whisk until smooth.

Preparation of biscuit

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (set 170 degrees if you are using a frying pan, painted in a dark color). Lubricate the bottom of three pans with a diameter of about 20 centimeters, then sprinkle with flour. You can bake cakes separately, but this option will take much longer - you do not want to spend a few hours on one cake? Pistachio or not - dessert will not bring any pleasure to the cook, if he takes too much energy from him.
• Mix in a bowl of flour, cornstarch, baking powder, soda and salt. Set it aside.
• Grind pistachios with a food processor or blender, take two tablespoons of the resulting quantity of chopped nuts and add to a bowl with dry ingredients. Continue to grind the remaining pistachios until they turn out powder. Add the powder to the mixture of dry ingredients.
• Beat the butter in the bowl of the electric mixer for two minutes. Add the sugar and continue to beat until the mixture turns into light flakes. Stir the whole chicken egg and vanilla sugar.

Second phase

• Knead the dough in three different portions, adding the dry ingredients and milk to the whipped butter. Stir each serving thoroughly before proceeding with the next preparation.
• Whisk the egg whites in a separate bowl. Combine them with the dough and gently mix until a uniform consistency is obtained. You got an almost ready cake - pistachio shade will be noticeable already at this stage.
• Pour the dough into three cooked frying pans and gently level the tops of the biscuits. Bake for 28-32 minutes or check the availability with a wooden toothpick. Leave the biscuits to cool in the frying pan for ten minutes, then remove them from the oven and cool completely.

How to assemble a cake

Pistachio cake is collected on the same principles as any other dessert based on sponge cakes.

• Using a large knife with a serrated blade, cut off the tops of the cake so that they become equally even.
• Put one biscuit on a large plate or special dish and cover it with icing. Place the second biscuit on top and cover the glaze again. Repeat with the third cake, then gently add a thin layer of glaze over the sides of the cake. Keep the dessert in the refrigerator for thirty minutes, then remove and re-cover the remaining glaze. If you want to use the glaze for decoration, leave the required amount of the finished mixture and pour it into the confectionery syringe. Decorate pistachio cake can be as chopped or whole green nuts, and berries (especially beautiful looks blackberry).
• Before serving, keep the dessert in the fridge.

Strawberry and pistachio cake

Who would have thought that unsalted pistachios perfectly combined with sweet berries? Raspberries and strawberries perfectly set off the specific taste of nuts and give the ready-made dish an exquisite appearance. To prepare this cake yourself, you will need:

• 200 g of pistachios;
• 275 g of brown sugar;
• 250 g of butter;
• 3 chicken eggs;
• 275 g of pancake flour;
• 75 g of Greek yogurt (not fat-free).

For strawberry glaze, take 200 g of butter and 300 g of powdered sugar, as well as 300 g of small strawberry berries, some of which will be used to decorate the dessert.

Pistachio cake with strawberries is a wonderful decoration of any festive table. Preparation takes 1 hour 15 minutes, the product set is designed for 12 servings. One serving contains 670 kilocalories.

Detailed recipe

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees and lay a square baking dish (about 20x20 cm in size) with thin paper. Put 150 g of pistachios in a combine, add half the sugar and finely chop. Pour the shredded nuts into a large bowl, add the remaining sugar and beat with a blender butter until the consistency becomes creamy. Stuff the eggs, add flour and Greek yogurt, and continue whisking until smooth. If necessary, pour a little milk into the mixture.
• Carefully pour the mixture into the form using a tablespoon, and bake the biscuit for 45-50 minutes. Check the preparedness with a wooden toothpick. Cool the biscuit for 15 minutes, then turn it over on a serving dish and remove the baking paper. You almost got a ready-made pistachio cake - the recipe is supplemented only with glaze.
• To make the glaze, whip butter until white. Gradually, combine it with sugar powder, whilst continuing to beat. When the mixture thickens, add four strawberry berries and whisk again until the berries are completely ground. Combine the workpiece for the glaze with the remaining powdered sugar. If the mass is too thick, beat one more strawberries.
• Cover the top and sides of the cake with freshly prepared glaze. Finely chop the remaining pistachios and decorate them with the edges of the cake. Immediately before serving, finely chop the remaining strawberries and gently lay the pieces in even rows over the glaze. Each next row must go in the opposite direction from the previous one.

In the same way, a pistachio cake with raspberries is baked.

Cream

To make a cake of pistachios, it is not necessary to include all your favorite green nuts in a biscuit dough. You can not even bake a biscuit, but just buy ready-made cakes in a store - and soak them with your own mixed pistachio cream. On the Internet you can find many recipes of nut cream. The interested reader is offered the simplest and easy-to-prepare option.

You will need:

• 100 g mascarpone;
• 3 tablespoons finely chopped pistachios;
• 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar;
• 3 tablespoons of thick cream (fat content of 48%).

Pistachio cream for the cake is prepared very quickly: simply combine all the ingredients in a bowl and knead until a homogeneous mass is obtained. Spread the creams with cream - and a wonderful dessert is ready!

Helpful Tips

• Pistachios can sometimes be difficult to clean. Take half of the shell from the already peeled nut and pododete it with the stubborn shell of a new pistachio - the nut can easily split.
• If you bake a cake "from scratch" and want to present it to someone as a birthday present, be sure to specify if the birthday person is allergic to nuts, and in particular to pistachios. Unfortunately, delicacy green nuts are extremely allergenic product - it is better to take care of the health of the donee in advance.
• If you use granulated sugar, remember that the glaze with such a component needs to be welded first, and then completely cooled down - only after that you can pour a pistachio-chocolate cake or any other dessert.

Reviews

Not all people like to bake - some simply do not get very good cakes and pies, but someone prefers the shop products. If you want to buy a ready-made cake with pistachios, it is better to get acquainted with the reviews about this dessert in advance. Some large stores and retail chains offer baked goods and confectionery products prepared according to their own unique recipes. A certain popularity was received, for example, the cake "Malika" pistachio, which became famous due to an interesting combination of a moderately moist curd biscuit with an exquisite nut cream. Be prepared, however, to spend a considerable amount on a ready-made dessert: pistachios are quite expensive, and therefore the purchase of factory desserts with the content of these nuts requires significant financial costs. The taste, however, justifies any expenses: a real pistachio cake is a real pleasure for a true gourmet.