Pistachio Cake with Honey
A pistachio sponge made from scratch, with ground nuts in place of a third of the flour, warm honey poured over the top and chopped pistachios for crunch.
- Total
- 1 hr 10 min
- Prep
- 25 min
- Bake
- 45 min
- Serves
- 10
- Level
- Medium
- Tin
- 20 cm springform
A pistachio cake made from scratch is a different thing from the boxed pudding-mix version, and the difference is where the green comes from. Here it is ground nuts doing the work, not colouring. They bring two things at once: fat, which gives a tender crumb that keeps for days, and protein, which means the cake browns long before it is cooked through.
So the oven comes down to 170°C, the top gets a sheet of foil once it colours, and the flour is cut with ground pistachios rather than replaced entirely; go all flour-free and it slumps.
Honey rather than sugar syrup on top, warmed just enough to pour. Something floral, if you have it.
Ingredients
For the cake
To finish
You will need
- 20 cm springform tin
- Food processor
- Small saucepan
Method
Oven 170°C · fan 150°C · 340°F
Grind the pistachios
Blitz 150 g of pistachios in a food processor with 2 tablespoons of the flour until they are the texture of coarse sand. The flour stops them turning to paste. Stop pulsing the moment they look sandy.
Tip Buy pistachios already shelled but not roasted or salted. Roasted nuts grind oilier and the colour goes brown rather than green.
Heat the oven and line the tin
Heat the oven to 170°C / 150°C fan, which is lower than usual because nuts brown fast. Butter a 20 cm springform tin and line the base.
Cream the butter and sugar
Beat the butter and sugar for 4 minutes until pale, then beat in the eggs one at a time.
Fold everything together
Fold in the ground pistachios, the remaining flour, the baking powder and salt, then the yoghurt and both extracts. The batter is thick and pale green.
Bake for 45 minutes
Bake for 45–50 minutes. A nut cake browns on top well before the middle is done, so cover it loosely with foil at 30 minutes and test with a skewer at 45.
Release and cool
Cool 20 minutes in the tin, unclip the ring and leave the cake on the base until it is barely warm.
Scatter the nuts
Roughly chop the remaining 40 g of pistachios and scatter them over the top, leaving them coarse. Fine chopping looks like dust.
Warm the honey and pour
Warm the honey in a small pan until it is just runny and pourable; 30 seconds is plenty. Pour it over each slice as you serve.
Baker's notes
- The almond extract is not a mistake. A half teaspoon makes the pistachio taste more like itself; any more and it takes over.
- This cake improves on day two as the nut oils settle through the crumb.
Keeping it 4 days in a tin. Do not refrigerate: cold hardens the nut fat and dries the crumb. Freezes well for 2 months.
Questions, answered
Why is my pistachio cake brown instead of green?
Heat and roasting. Use raw pistachios, drop the oven to 170°C, and cover the top with foil once it colours. The crumb stays green, but expect soft sage rather than bright emerald, and anything brighter is colouring.
Can I use ground almonds instead?
Yes, in the same quantity. You lose the colour but the crumb and method are identical, and it is considerably cheaper.
If it goes wrong
Three things account for most of what happens to a cake in a domestic oven. Each has its own guide.
- It sank in the middleSeven causes, told apart by the shape of the crater.
- It came out raw in the centreBrown outside, wet inside, and how to rescue the one you are holding.
- The caramel seizedIt is almost always fixable. The lump re-melts.
