So . . . this past Friday, March 6, was the Irish concert by the Cherry Creek Chorale, a great, great occasion. And afterwards was the reception (which, thankfully, is held only after the Friday-night concert, not the Saturday-night one.) I made three items: my Spicy Cheddar Cookies, Guinness Brownies, and Pistachio Cupcakes. Follow the links to the first two recipes if you’re interested. And for the wonderful frosting I made, go here. I’m giving the recipe for the pistachio cupcakes below. For the Guinness Brownies I’m linking to the post over at Sally’s Baking Addiction. Note, though, that I ended up just using the white chocolate-cream cheese frosting linked to above for those as well as for the pistachio cupcakes. I had made a double batch of the frosting and realized that I had plenty for all of them. I had a different frosting planned for the brownies, a Swiss-buttercream version of Sally’s powdered-sugar one that she includes with the brownie recipe. No more powdered-sugar frostings for me! One of these days I’ll make her brownies again and then can post my own recipe for those (since I’ve made a couple of tweaks) and also for my own frosting, but this will do for now. Let me just say that her brownies are spectacular. And they’re so rich and strongly flavored that you can’t possibly eat very many of them, thus fulfilling my mandate of developing a taste for sharp flavors.
You’ll notice that, as usual, I don’t have any pictures. Friday afternoon did not go as planned. I’d wanted Jim to take some nice pictures in situ with his camera, but he ended up getting stuck in an endless meeting and barely making it to the concert at all. And I was much too frazzled to even think about pictures. So there it is. As I often say this isn’t one of those food blogs with recipes made for the sake of the blog. It’s a blog with food that I’ve actually served, and sometimes that means that there’s no time to stop and document it. But you know that if I post a recipe I can tell you how it went over with the people who ate it, which is an element that’s often missing in straight food blogs.
Okay. Enough of tooting my own horn to justify my lack of photography skills. The following recipe is one of several that I’ve been making for years and that was originally taken from The Washington Post‘s Food section. I now make it in mini-muffin cups for parties, thus fulfilling my desire to make desserts small. The recipe should make enough for 48 minis.
Pistachio Cake
This moit and delicious cake is also unusual, easy, and adaptable. Almonds may be used instead of pistachios, and orange flavoring may be added if desired.
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 tsp. baking powder
- 3/8 tsp. baking soda
- 3/4 cup ground pistachios or ground almonds*
- 3/8 tsp. salt**
- 3 eggs
- 1 1/2 ups sugar
- 3/4 cup neutral-flavored oil***
- 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
- 3/4 tsp. almond extract or pistachio extract, the real thing, please
- 3/4 cup sour cream, full fat, please
- 1/8 tsp. orange oil, or 1 tsp. zest, optional to add an additional flavor
Instructions
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Preheat oven to 3250.
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Whisk together the dry ingredients (through the ground nuts) in a small bowl. Set aside.
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Beat eggs and sugar together until fluffy, about 2 min., using a hand or stand mixer. (This recipe probably isn't big enough to bother with the stand mixer, but if you double the recipe you'll definitely want to use one.) Gradually add oil, then extracts and optional orange oil or zest. Gradually add dry ingredients, mixing just until incorporated. Add sour cream and mix just until no white streaks remain.
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Line two 24-cup mini muffin pans with (what else?) mini baking liners. Portion out the batter into these, filling about 2/3 full. Easiest way to do this is with a small "disher," one of the mot useful kitchen tools you can have for tasks such as this one. You should come out even with the batter.
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Bake for 15 minutes, then test with a toothpick which should come out clean. They may need 2-3 more minutes. Don't overbake--they don't need to be brown on top. Cool completely before frosting. Best option, as far as I'm concerned, is my spectacular and easy white chocolate-cream cheese frosting.
Recipe Notes
*You have several options here: ground raw pistachios, which would be quite expensive and/or labor intensive if you buy them in the shell, or roasted, salted pistachios, preferably from your warehouse club (which is where I get mine), or almonds you grind yourself, either blanched or natural, or almond flour. The last option will produce a cake with a smoother texture since it's much finer than what you can get by grinding it yourself. Be careful not to grind the nuts into a paste, by the way. You can help ward this off by grinding them with some of the sugar and by not overdoing it.
**Cut amount of salt in half if you're using salted nuts. I know this i kind of a fiddly amount--it's caused by the fact that I've increased the original recipe so that it makes a 9x13 pan or 48 mini cupcakes. You can just use a heaping 1/8 tsp. of salt for half of 3/8.
***You don't want to use olive oil but something neutral. Or, if you want to really amp up the nut flavor, you could use almond or pistachio oil. (Pistachio oil is expensive. about $1/ounce, with almond oil running about half that.)