Pistachio cake with raspberries and white chocolate
I recently made this for a friend’s Mum’s birthday, allegedly it was a big hit. Either my mate is extremely tactful or this cake is a beaut. If the white chocolate cream filling is anything to go by it’s the latter. The recipe below will leave you with a bit too much of the sandwiching centre but as you’ll probably discover after ‘quality control’ sampling, this is no bad thing.
Serves 10
220g shelled pistachios, ground to somewhere between fine and textured crumbs, plus a few extra nuts for decorating
6 large eggs, separated
180g Caster sugar
200g white chocolate, melted and cooled slightly (white chocolate is a temperamental entity so the best way to do this is to bring a small saucepan of water to the boil, turn off the heat and place a bowl containing the broken-up chocolate on top of the pan. Leave for 10 or so minutes and stir. Fierce direct heat can cause the chocolate to split or become lumpy. Slow and steady wins the race in this instance)
1 vanilla pod, seeds removed
1 pint double cream
300g raspberries
Icing sugar
Start by greasing and lining two 21cm/ 8 inch round tins and pre-heating your oven to 180 degrees
Combine your egg yolks and caster sugar in a bowl and whisk until pale, fluffy and increased in size
In a separate bowl, with a clean whisk, beat your egg whites to soft peaks
Fold your ground pistachios into the egg yolk mixture with a large spoon of the egg whites to loosen things up a bit
Fold in the egg whites, taking care to keep things airy and light
Divide the mix between your tins and bake until when a skewer inserted comes out clean- around 25 minutes
Remove the cakes from the oven and leave to cool a little before turning out onto a wire rack, don’t be alarmed if they sink a little at this stage
Whilst the cakes are cooling mix together the vanilla pod seeds and white chocolate
Take a dozen or so of your raspberries and using a small teaspoon fill the raspberries with a little of the chocolate mix (they can literally only handle a few millilitres). Prop them up against each other in a small fluted tart tin (or similar) to keep them upright and refrigerate until the the chocolate sets
Whip your cream and fold in the remaining white chocolate and vanilla mix
Place one of your cakes onto a plate and dollop a healthy amount of the cream onto the top. Scatter over some raspberries (the ones sans chocolate filling) and top with another hefty helping of the cream
Place the other cake on top, pushing down slightly to sandwich together.
To decorate, dust with icing sugar, crumbled pistachios, edible glitter (no obligation) and the white chocolate-filled raspberries
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lady-aga posted this
