'This is serious cake,' someone told me on Sunday. 'It's, like, SBS cake, or Merchant Ivory cake. It's cake for grown ups.'
I agreed. It was my beloved Jessie's birthday, and everyone deserves a massive layer cake for their birthday. But, honestly? I've been suffering from layer cake fatigue lately. Sponges are fine, but I'm honestly not crazy about over-sweet icings, and sponge smothered in icing loses its charm very quickly. I've made good old-fashioned, CWA-approved coconut cakes for Jessie's birthday, but this year I wanted to do something a little different. So I turned to the Internet's cake guru, Deb from Smitten Kitchen, for inspiration, and instantly decided the time had come for pistachio cake.
And seriously, you guys, pistachio cake! Not just any pistachio cake, but rich, buttery, barely green pistachio cake, layered with jam and bitterly dark ganache spiked with cool cardamom. I ditched the marzipan, for the simple reason that I didn't want to bother with something sticky, but I did decide to make the jam myself, and the cardamom is my addition. Actually, the cardamom was a bit of a punt, and it worked out brilliantly, giving the very dark, intensely rich ganache a cool, almost floral spiciness.
I'm not going to lie: this is a bit of a fiddly cake. You do need a food processor to grind up the pistachios, and any time you use ganache on a cake you can rest assured it'll end up covering your kitchen, floor to ceiling. But I made this cake, start to finish, in about 3 hours, and a lot of that was spent waiting around for the thing to bake or cool. Be sure to lay four strips of baking paper in a square on your plate or cake board before assembling the cake. That way you can smear and drip ganache all over the place, and just pull the strips away when you're done, revealing a clean plate.
Another note: Deb mixed up the batter in a rather odd way, whisking together the dry ingredients, then beating in milk and butter followed by the many eggs. I'm sure this would be fine if you had a stand mixer, but I have a shady hand mixer from Big W, and it really wasn't up to the task. In future I'll make the cake as I've suggested below. Deb also made this in three pans, and I had three prepared, but panicked when I realised just how thin the three cakes would be. I wound up baking two cakes, which took twice as long as three as they were considerably thicker, then splitting both cakes in half to make four layers, making for even more jammy layery goodness.
Splitting a cake into layers seems intimidating, but it's not too hard. Just take the (completely cool) cake layer and a serrated bread knife and, with one hand on top of the cake to steady it, slice through the cake with a smooth sawing motion. Oh, and also breathe.
Pistachio Cake
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen. Serves 8-10.
For cake:
3/4 cup of raw, shelled pistachios (around 125g)
1 2/3 cup sugar
2 cups flour + 2 tbsp cornflour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
225g butter, softened
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 eggs
For jam (via
Martha Stewart):
Punnet of strawberries
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp balsamic or red wine vinegar
2 whole star anise (optional)
For ganache:
450g of the best, darkest, bitterest chocolate you can find
1 1/4 cups cream
4 whole cardamom pods
Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Butter two 20cm round cake tins, and line the bottoms with circles of baking paper. Butter the baking paper and set aside.
Set aside 1/4 cup of the pistachios to use for decoration. In a food processor, grind together the remaining 1/2 cup pistachios with 2/3 cup sugar until finely ground. Put into a medium bowl. Measure the flour into a small bowl; remove two tbsp of flour, and replace them with the 2 tbsp cornflour. Whisk together flours, ground nuts and sugar, salt and baking powder in the medium bowl and set aside.
In a large bowl, beat together the butter and remaining 1 cup of sugar on high speed until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, followed by the vanilla. Beat in half the dry ingredients, followed by half the milk, then remaining dry ingredients and milk.
Divide the batter between the two cake tins, and bake for 40-50 minutes until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on wire racks in their tins for 15 minutes, then turn out from the tins and cool completely.
While the cakes are baking, make the jam. Clean out the food processor, then sling the hulled strawberries in and blitz to a pulp. Transfer the pulped strawberries to a large saucepan (it will be very thin in the pan, but you want that), and whisk in the sugar, vinegar and star anise, if using. Cook over medium high heat, stirring constantly, until it boils and thickens, the bubbles covering the entire surface. Decant into a glass bowl or jug and refrigerate.
When you remove the cakes from the oven, start the ganache. Pound the cardamom pods a couple of times in a mortar and pestle, or press on them with the flat of a kitchen knife. Put them in a small pot along with the cream, and cook over medium-low heat until just warm. Set aside to steep. When the cakes are cool, break the chocolate into pieces and pulse in the food processor until ground. Heat the cream over medium heat until bubble start to form around the edges, then strain into a jug. With the motor running, pour the cream into the food processor.
Now to assemble the cake! Lay four strips of baking paper in a square on your plate or board, then divide the first cake layer in half. Centre the bottom of the layer on the board, and spread with a scant 1/4 cup of jam. Drizzle a couple of tablespoons of ganache over the jam, then carefully add the second layer. Repeat with remaining layers. Using an offset spatula, cover the cake with a layer of ganache, then allow to set for around 5 minutes. Apply a second layer over the first. This sounds easy, but you will swear and curse and hate the world and then suddenly your cake will look gorgeous. Remember, one of the benefits of a layer cake is you can patch any cracks or weird bits with icing.
Decorate as you see fit. I toasted the remaining pistachios and coarsely crushed them in a mortar and pestle, then sprinkled it liberally over the top of the cake, along with some silver cachous for sparkle. Remove your paper strips and feel accomplished.