White chocolate pistachio cake
A delicate, fluffy sponge filled with chopped pistachios and white chocolate chunks, then finished with a creamy white chocolate buttercream.
Ingredients
For the cake
- 225 g unsalted butter softened
- 225 g golden caster sugar
- 4 large free-range eggs
- 250 g self-raising flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp ground cardamom
- 100 ml whole milk
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
- 100 g unsalted pistachios ground in a food processor
- 75 g white chocolate roughly chopped
For the buttercream
- 150 g white chocolate broken into pieces
- 150 g unsalted butter softened
- 150 g icing sugar sifted
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
For decoration
- Edible roses
- Pistachios roughly chopped
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 180C/160C fan/350F. Grease two 20cm cake tins, and line with baking parchment.
- Cream the butter and sugar with an electric whisk and beat in the eggs, one at a time. Ensure that each one is incorportated before you add the next.
- Sift in your flour, baking powder, cardamom and milk, then mix for 1 minute – making sure you don’t overbeat the batter. Fold in the 100g ground pistachios and 75g of the chopped white chocolate using a spatula, then fill the tins evenly with the batter.
- Bake for ~35-40 minutes until a skewer pushed into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool completely in the tins.
- For the icing, break up the white chocolate into a heatproof bowl and set it over a pan of just steaming water until melted.N.B. Make sure the bottom of your bowl doesn’t touch the water.
- Set your white chocolate aside to cool. You do not want to add this to the butter and icing sugar until it is at least room temperature otherwise it’ll melt the butter!
- Cream the butter with an electric whisk, then beat in the melted chocolate and vanilla bean paste until light and creamy.
- Sift in your icing sugar and beat until you have a light, creamy icing that’s fully combined.
- Remove the cooled sponges from the tins. Spread a third of the icing on one cake, then top with the second. Spread the rest of the icing on top and sides and sprinkle with any remaining pistachios or edible roses for decoration.
Notes
Adapted from Chetna Makan