So … it’s been a crazy few months year, huh? How has your quarantine been? I’m still here, watching more TV than I ever thought possible, reading less than I should, baking bread (banana and otherwise), and trying to otherwise stay afloat as the world implodes around us. Hope you are safe, healthy, and otherwise well!
I’ve been spending a lot of time home with my parents in Delaware, which means two things: 1. I’ve been letting my mom “take the lead” on cooking (aka doing all of it, not that she minds); and 2. I have watched all of the British murder mystery shows. Midsomer Murders, Endeavour, Father Brown, the entire Agatha Christie oeuvre — if a crime has occurred in the British countryside, I have watched a quaint old person solve it.
I love them. They’re usually charming, set in a cute town that I can’t wait to move to, and riveting enough to forget my existential angst at the state of the world for 60-ish minutes. They also always feature people sitting down for tea, usually with some sort of delicious looking cake on the side.
One of the biggest benefits of being home is that most days feature at least one cup of chai (small solace for being unable to take my annual trip to Kolkata last year). We don’t usually have cake with our tea, but after 1,859 episodes of Miss Marple, I decided it was time to change that.
Finally inspired to return to the kitchen, I turned (as I usually do), to Deb Perelman at Smitten Kitchen. I’d bookmarked this pistachio loaf cake long ago, and as fate would have it, we had exactly enough pistachios to make it. (Though not the pistachio glaze, an error that I will rectify the next time I make this.)
The cake is dead simple if you have a food processor, nutty and fragrant, and despite my best efforts to ruin it by baking it at 350F for 53 minutes before realizing that the bake temp is actually 325F, incredibly plush and word-that-must-not-be-mentioned-but-starts-with-M. The best part is the color: it bakes up into the loveliest shade of chartreuse, one of my absolute favorite colors to wear, decorate with, and now, eat.
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As mentioned, I had to forgo the lemon-pistachio glaze that Deb recommends because I ran out of pistachios (I’ll def be trying this next time though). Instead, I made a bit of sour cream-laced whipped cream to serve alongside the cake. But the cake truly doesn’t need either — it’s perfect all on its own.
Ingredients
For the cake:
- 1 cup + 2 tablespoons shelled unsalted pistachios
- 1 teaspoon orange zest (zest from half a medium orange)
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- a hefty pinch of salt
- 10 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into cubes
- 3 large eggs
- 1/4 cup milk
- a heaping 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
- 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325F (not 350F *ahem*). Butter a 9-x-5 loaf pan.
- Toast the pistachios in a skillet on medium-low heat for about 10 minutes, until they’re slightly browned and fragrant. Set aside to cool completely.
- In the bowl of your food processor (without the blade), rub the orange zest into the sugar so that it forms a wet sand-like texture. Add the salt, and set up the blade.
- Add the cooled pistachios and pulse until the pistachios, sugar, and salt are powdery, like dry sand (stop before you make a paste).
- Add the butter and mix until the texture is creamy and smooth-ish — it will clump at first, then loosen. (Smitten Kitchen said to look for a frosting-like texture, but my processor could not get it that smooth. The recipe works either way.)
- Add the eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition. Then add the milk and mix, then the baking powder and the extracts, and mix again until everything is well combined, scraping the bowl down well. Add the flour and pulse until it’s just mixed. Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan.
- Bake for 65-75 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool for 10 minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool completely.
- Serve the cake with a cup of tea and (very optional) dollops of barely sweetened cream.
Notes
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
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