Almond and pistachio cake

Two posts in a week, yaaay! Its an achievement for me to be honest. What with the weather being so shitty, my pictures never come out well and I hate doing a blog post with horrid pictures. This ones not too great either, but then the recipe is definitely a keeper and since I couldn't anticipate when I'd make it again, I had to pen it down for posterity. 

I hadn't baked in ages (well, a month to be precise) and somehow that urge to eat a freshly baked cake right out of the oven passed along with a lot of other urges and so baking has been kept to a minimum. We have turned religiously to eating fruit after meals, trying to make the most of summer bounty before the bloody autumn sets in (which by the looks of it, has already set in UK- Its 12pm here in London but looks more like 7pm).

So when I somehow stumbled upon this recipe on the Good Food website, I decided to bake. I left aside all my work and declared the day as a lazy day. I even had half a mind to skip my swimming session, but since i was enjoying it so much, I didn't. I even watched a couple of movies (blinding out the fact that I would have double the amount of work to do the next day, since I had deadlines to meet), and was almost gonna call Ro and ask him to pick up some Chinese food on the way back, when I thought I should make him some Tagliatelle pasta which he has been asking me for so long. So instead I asked him to pick up a bottle of Italian wine :)

This is the first time I've used pistachios in baking, or rather cooking at all. I was really sceptical about the final outcome and so halved the recipe. The cake caught me by surprise as it was one of the moistest evah. The pistachios were not too overpowering, but at the same time the cake did taste exotic, not to mention how easy it was putting it together

So, while I'm typing out this recipe, and its pouring outside, I have declared today also as a lazy day where I shall not even be going to the pool, but be sitting at home and researching on the places to visit and treks to do on our annual holiday, end of this month. See what lethargy can do to me? I'm now so concerned I would continue this state till end of the week :O (and maybe even block my editors off gtalk, so they wont harass me about corrections and deadlines)

Recipe halved from here

Butter- 125 gms at room temperature

Caster sugar- 100 gms

Eggs- 2

Ground almonds- 60 gms

Ground pistachio nuts- 50 gms

Plain flour- 25 gms

Baking powder- 1/2 tsp

Beat together the butter and sugar till light and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition

Mix together the plain flour and baking powder and stir this into the egg-butter mix followed by ground almonds and pistachios.

Alternatively, mix the flour, baking pwd, and ground nuts together and add it altogether.

Give a good stir and pour into a greased 9 inch baking dish.

Place in an oven pre heated at 180C and bake for about 40 minutes.

Do the skewer test and then cool on a wire rack.

I dug into it while it was still warm.

Notes: The original recipe called for lemon zest, which I avoided.

Replace the plain flour with cornmeal for a gluten free version

I bought a pack of pistachio nuts and ground them at home. I kinda over did it, so the oil kinda made it clump together. That's why you can see specks of green here and there. Make sure you get the pistachio in the powder form itself.

The cake was a bit too greasy and so I'd probably reduce the butter next time.

The cake was nice and sweet for my liking and so I avoided the pistachio topping. Feel free to try it out, recipe is available in the link.