Pistachio Cake – RecipeTin Eats

August 11, 2024

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There’s something about pistachios that make them a bit fancier than other nuts, don’t you think? So this Pistachio Cake is special, worthy of serving at any occasion! Topped with a cloud of Cream Cheese Whip. Think – subtly tangy whipped cream. Dreamy!

Pistachio cake

This is a Pistachio Cake that has a beautiful soft crumb with lovely pistachio flavour. Which, as strange as that sounds, is rarer than you might think. And I’m speaking from experience here, having tried quite a few recipes over the years!

The reason is pretty simple – this Pistachio Cake recipe uses almost double the amount of pistachios of typical recipes.

Also, I insist on toasting the pistachios first before blitzing into a powder which, as with all nuts, brings out the flavour. It’s a basic step that makes all the difference, especially because there’s a limit on how much pistachio powder can be added into the batter without weighing it down. Does it surprise anyone that we are hitting the limit??

Plus, pistachios are more expensive than most nuts. So let’s get as much flavour as we can out of them!

Cream Cheese Whip frosting for Pistachio Cake

We’re finishing today’s cake with a generous cloud of what I’ve christened a Cream Cheese Whip. A bit of an invention that came about when I was thinking what to top it with. It’s already rich with pistachio nuttiness so I didn’t think it needed a frosting as sweet and buttery as buttercream. But I felt like plain whipped cream was a little too light and airy, and I wanted a bit of tang to balance out the earthiness of the pistachios.

Solution? Do a Cream Cheese Frosting whipped cream mash up!

Bonus: It’s essentially a stabilised whipped cream which means it will stay fluffy for days without weeping or deflating like regular whipped cream.

Ingredients in Pistachio Cake

Here’s what you need to make this Pistachio Cake. Freshly blitzed, freshly toasted pistachio nuts is key to ensure you can actually taste pistachio in this cake.

PISTACHIOs

I use pre-shelled pistachio kernels. Nice and convenient as someone has done the shelling for me!

I prefer unsalted pistachios so I can control the amount of salt in the cake. Saltiness of nuts always seems to vary depending on brand / source. But if your pistachios are salted, just skip the salt in the recipe.

To shell your own pistachios, use 225g / 7 oz (125g/4.4 oz once shelled) and reduce the toasting time to 7 minutes (because shelled kernels tend to be softer).

⚠️ Not all pistachios are created equal. The older they are, the less flavour they have. The better the quality, the better the flavour. I’ve tried this with regular grocery store ones, and better quality ones. I still got good pistachio flavour with the regular grocery store ones. This was my baseline for this recipe.

for the CAKE BATTER

Make sure your yogurt and egg are at room temperature before making the batter. If they are fridge cold, it will make the batter cold which means the cake won’t rise as well in the oven. Speaking from experience here! I tried to skip the step of bringing yogurt to room temperature – and was penalised for it.😝

Flour – Just plain / all-purpose flour. This recipe will work with self raising flour but it probably won’t rise as well (common theme using self raising flour rather than flour + baking powder). If you use self raising flour, skip the baking soda and baking powder.
Baking powder and baking soda (bi-carb soda) – These both make cakes, muffins etc rise but have different effects on different batters. As a general rule, baking soda is 3x stronger than baking powder. Substitute – if you don’t have baking soda you can substitute with extra baking powder (see recipe notes for amount). However, expect the surface of the cake to dome and the crumb is a touch less soft. It’s mainly a visual thing though, so it’s not a big deal!
Yogurt – Much loved baking trick to make cakes and muffins with a lovely moist crumb compared to using thinner liquids such as milk. The extra role it plays here is that the acidity in yogurt gives the baking soda a kick start to make the cake rise. This is why sometimes you see a tiny amount of vinegar in cakes, like Red Velvet Cake. Looks totally out of place, but serves a purpose to get the baking soda going.
Egg – Use a “large egg” which weighs ~50-55g/2oz each, sold in cartons labelled “large eggs” weighing 600-660g / 1.2 lb for a dozen. This recipe is reasonably forgiving so don’t fret if your egg is a bit larger or smaller, just don’t use, say, an ostrich egg or quail egg. 😂 See here for how to scale if your egg is massively different in size.

What are large eggs for cooking? — A “large egg” is an industry defined term for an egg that is 50-55g/2oz each (in shell) sold in cartons labelled “large eggs” weighing 600-660g/1.2lb for a dozen.

Butter AND oil – Butter adds lovely flavour but cakes are not as moist and don’t have as good a shelf life as cakes made with oil. But oil is not as tasty! In this recipe, I like to use both so I have the best of both worlds – lovely buttery flavour and moistness plus shelf life from oil. This trick doesn’t work with all cakes, it depends on the batter. Very happy it works here!
Sugar – Not too much, just 3/4 cup (150g). Aside from my preference for cakes that are not overly sweet, I noticed that the sweeter the cake, the less pistachio flavour came through.

Caster sugar / superfine sugar is my default for baking because it’s finer than regular sugar (granulated sugar) so you can ensure it dissolves easily into mixtures. However, for this recipe, regular / granulated white sugar is fine. (Don’t use brown sugar, it will likely make the batter too damp).
Green colouring – The pistachios alone will not give the cake a pistachio green colour. Rather, it comes out brown. So it needs a helping hand from food colouring if you want your cake to have the colour pictured in this post.

I use 4 small drops to achieve the colour pictured. Feel free to add more if you want a greener cake. Once baked, the cake is a touch darker than the uncooked batter. Here’s a comparison of the batter and the colour of the cooked cake:

Cream cheese WHIP

Here’s what you need for the Cream Cheese Whip frosting. It’s essentially Whipped Cream plus some cream cheese which stabilises and enriches it, as well as giving it a lovely touch of tang which works really well with the nutty pistachio flavour.

Cream cheese – Softened to room temperature, so it’s easy to beat until fluffy and smooth.
Whipping cream – Make sure the cream you get can be whipped because not all cream is made for whipping. Some are dolloping creams (ie thick cream you dollop onto cakes, like sour cream) or thin pouring creams that you stir into things like soup. If it’s a whipping cream, it will say on the carton.
Lemon juice – For a smidge of extra tang which I think goes really well with the pistachio flavour. However, not critical. Consider it an enhancement rather than essential! (PS Doesn’t make it overly lemony. I originally tried a stronger lemon flavour and found it overwhelmed the pistachio flavour).
Vanilla – For flavour. I tried without and missed it.
Salt – Standard practice in sweet baking recipes these days as it brings out the other flavours. We only use a pinch so you won’t taste taste.

How to make Pistachio Cake

You won’t need an electric beater to make the cake part. Just mix it up with a wooden spoon! (See FAQ section for other cake-making methods I tried).

1. MAKE PISTACHIO POWDER

Please don’t skip toasting the pistachios. It not only brings out the pistachio flavour (especially imperative if you get pistachios from regular grocery stores like I do), it makes them crisper so they grind up more easily into a powder rather than turning into a paste.

Toast the pistachios in the oven for 12 minutes or until they smell nutty and they are crisp (eat to check).
Blitz – Let them cool completely then blitz into a powder. It’s very quick using a NutriBullet as I do – literally 2 x 2 second pulses. Some pistachios lumps are ok / welcome, but you want it to be at least 95% powder.

⚠️ Be careful not to let the pistachios turn into a paste which will happen if you blitz for too long.

2. MAKE THE PISTACHIO cake

Break up pistachio clumps – Whisk the pistachio powder with the flour. Then use your fingers to break up any obvious pistachio powder clumps into a powder ie where pistachio powder has gotten a bit pasty so they stick together. Adding flour makes this step easier because if you pinch the plain pistachio powder, it sticks together into a paste. Some small clumps remaining are fine, they will dissolve in the oven.

Then whisk in remaining dry ingredients (baking powder, baking soda, salt).
Whisk wet – Put all the wet ingredients into a separate medium bowl. Then whisk until combined.

Combine wet and dry – Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Use a rubber spatula to mix them together but stop when the flour is just about mixed in. (Why? Because overmixed batter = tough cake, and we still have extra mixing to come when we add the food colouring).
Make it pistachio green! Add 4 small drops of green food colouring and mix it in. Goal – pistachio green colour. (Note: the cake becomes slightly darker in colour once baked, see above for raw batter vs cooked cake comparison.) Then mix until the batter is fully combined. You may have some small lumps from pistachio powder clumps (these will dissolve in the oven) and a few random whole bits of pistachio.

⚠️ If using gel rather than liquid colouring which is much more intense, use a tiny toothpick smear instead. See recipe card notes for directions.
💡 We add the food colouring in this step because bizarrely, I found the colouring doesn’t work as well if mixed in with the wet ingredients, I needed double the amount of colouring. I can’t explain it, I just know what I experienced!

Pour the batter into a lined pan then spread it out in the pan. You don’t need to smooth the surface perfectly because the batter will spread in the oven.

💡Tip : Because it’s a thickish batter, I prefer to grease the pan with butter rather than oil spray. This is because butter makes the paper stick more firmly to the pan so it won’t slide as you spread the batter.
Bake for 40 minutes at 180°C/350°F (160°C fan-forced), rotating at the 30 minute mark so the cake browns evenly on the surface. The cake is ready when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out without a batter smear (although it will be a bit wet because this is a damp cake).

Cool completely before spreading on the Cream Cheese Whip, else it will melt! 10 minutes in the pan then about 1 hour on a rack.

3. MAKING THE CREAM CHEESE Whip

Cream cheese first – Beat the cream cheese until soft and fluffy. Take a good 2 minutes on medium high speed to do this so you cream it really well. This is important because the cream is cold so it won’t blend in easily with the cream cheese (ie when you whip the cream, it can cause cream cheese lumps). To avoid this problem, you want to beat the cream cheese until it is really soft and creamy so it mixes in seamlessly with the cream.
Whip cream – Then add the cream, sugar, lemon, vanilla and salt, and beat until the cream is whipped. This frosting will look and behave like regular whipped cream, but it is a little richer thanks to the cream cheese. (Which is why it will stay fluffy for days rather than weeping like regular cream).

Spread the frosting onto the cake, making lovely big swirl patterns. A small offset spatula (pictured) makes short work of this (handy tool for cake frosting).
Sprinkle with finely chopped pistachios. And now the moment has arrived – yes, let’s eat it!

I’m so happy with how this cake turned out. It’s one of those recipes where I’ve tried quite a number of other recipes over the years but never found what I was looking for. So I decided to come up with my own.

I really like that it’s not too sweet and it relies on the richness from the natural oil of pistachios rather than excessive amounts of butter or oil. And I love the soft texture of the crumb, and that it’s still like freshly made 3 – 4 days later. Can’t say that about many cakes!

I really hope you give it a go one day, and love it as much as I do! – Nagi x

Pistachio Cake FAQ

The main thing was getting enough pistachio flavour. I kept increasing the amount up and up, until I hit a point that it was weighing down the cake batter too much, then tweaking the amount of flour and rising agents (baking powder and baking soda) to get enough rise in the crumb.

I think the amount of pistachios I use maxes out the nuts-to-flour ratio, which means it has the maximum real pistachio flavour you can achieve without resorting to pistachio paste (gourmet) or liquid essence (does such a thing exist??) or resorting to more technical methods (like pureeing).

Then the other aspect I experimented with was the batter making method. The two main ways to make a batter are hand-mixed, which usually involves oil and/or melted butter, or a traditional traditional “cream butter and sugar” method which starts with softened butter and calls for an electric beater.

Firstly, the “cream butter and sugar” method does have a more buttery flavour but the batters I tried just couldn’t take enough pistachios to get good pistachio flavour in the cake. The more pistachio I used, the more it weighed it down. Which explains why so many pistachio cake recipes I see online use considerably less pistachios.

Regardless, even using less pistachios, the shelf life of the cake wasn’t great. It was drier and firmer than ideal even the next day. I think the nuts was drying it out. I didn’t expect that. Usually ground nuts makes cakes more moist (think – cakes made with almond meal).

Anyway! Once I figured out the baseline pistachios required for actual pistachio flavour in the cake, then it just came down to method that would yield the softest cake with a nice rise, which turned out to be the hand mixed method using yogurt instead of milk for the liquid. (Tried and proven bakers’ trick).

Toasting the nuts was key – crisps them up so they blitz more easily into a powder, and, importantly, bringing out the pistachio flavour more.

The another irritating thing was to figure out was the baking soda v baking powder balance. As always, I hoped I could just use one of them (preferably baking powder). But it made the cake dome. Not a big deal, but flat is nicer, and also means the cake is rising more evenly on the inside.

So I ended up using a combination of both, for the best end result. 🙂

I also tried – a version with stronger lemon flavour in the cake and the frosting (suppressed the pistachio flavour, I thought), and adding a little almond extract which quite a few recipes seem to do, saying that it enhances the pistachio flavour. I’m afraid I don’t agree, I just found it overwhelmed the precious pistachio flavour.

Watch how to make it

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Pistachio Cake – RecipeTin Eats

Pistachio cake

Cream Cheese Whip frosting for Pistachio Cake