A Few of My Favourite Things !

I’ve just discovered these at Victoria Market this season and love peeling off the soft pink-green outer shell to reveal the harder shell of the nut that we normally associate with pistachios. The same colours are reflected on the inside, with the paper-thin pink skin covering up a bright green kernel.

I just realised, as I’m typing this recipe out, that I completely left out the 1/2 cup of EVOO that shold have been mixed in together with the yoghurt! Trust me to get a recipe wrong, but hey maybe it was actually right this time because the cake turned out to be light, fluffy and moist. It reminds mw of a chiffon cake. I think I may just leave out the olive oil again next time :-p I didn’t grind the pistachios so finely that it was like using pistachio meal, so it was lovely to get the crunch of some pistachio pieces as you eat the cakes.

1. Roast pistachios at 150C for 10-15 min then rub in the folds of a clean tea towel to remove the outer skins (like Gina, I didn’t go out of my way to get all the skin off and it didn’t seem to pose any problems). Increase oven to 175C.
2. Grind finely in a food processor then add flour, salt and baking powder and process briefly to mix.
3. Beat egg whites with 3/4 cup sugar to form stiff peaks. Remove to another bowl.
4. Beat egg whites with rest of the sugar until pale yellow. Add yoghurt then mix in pistachio-flour mix with a spatula.
5. Gently fold egg whites into batter and pour into lined cake tin. I used most of the batter in a 20″ round tin and the rest into my new silicone mini muffin tray.
6. Bake for 40 - 50 min until skewer comes out clean. With the babycakes, I baked for around 15 min.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 25th, 2006 at 9:40 am and is filed under cake, dessert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.