Words & Photography
by
Maxine Levene
With the temperatures here in Florida dipping into the 40's, I've been getting the urge to bake and warm up the kitchen with the ovens, and creating something from scratch is always a welcome desire. Although I love the convenience of store-bought cookies and boxed cake mixes, they never satisfy my craving for something sweet.
I wanted to step outside of the box and try a new recipe; something that was going to excite the taste buds and had interesting ingredient combinations. With those criteria in mind I knew exactly where to turn for a recipe...The Great British Baking Show. In my home we're big fans of The Great British Baking Show (we usually wait until we have a few episodes recorded and then have an afternoon marathon). If you've ever seen it, you'll know they love their unique flavor combinations and twists on classic recipes.
I decided to try the cake Benjamina made in the Season 4 premiere episode, with which she received great feedback on the flavor, texture, and moistness of her bake. I agree with everything Mary and Paul said because this cake didn't disappoint. The only thing I ended up tweaking was the way the ingredients were measured. The original recipe called for grams and milliliters which I changed to cups. I knew it would be easier for us American bakers to follow and I didn't want anyone struggling while trying to do it on their own.
If you're like me and tend to stick to recipes as they're written, there are other ways to be adventurous without messing around with ingredients...The original recipe called for a loaf pan but I decided to be adventurous, in my own way, and switch to a bundt pan. If you can't tell, I live life on the edge and take big risks.
I was thrilled with how the cake turned out. Obviously, I saw how well it went over on the show so I went into this a bit cocky, but there are always hiccups that can happen. Two small worries for me were the sugar and flour. In England, their flour selection is much larger than ours here in America. They have heavy flour, strong flour, plain flour, and a few more. I'm used to all-purpose and self-rising so I had to do a little internet hunting to figure out our equivalent. It's plain flour = all purpose flour. When it came to sugar I had a hard time finding Caster sugar but I found it in two places. Both Fresh Market and Williams & Sonoma sell it. You won't see it being sold in large quantities like you would regular sugar at the supermarket. Caster sugar is much finer than our traditional sugar, but not fine enough to be considered powdered sugar. Since buying it I've also used it on top of creme brûlée and it melted beautifully. I could never use regular sugar for creme brûlée again.
One lovely thing about this recipe is that flavors can be swapped out. You could do a grapefruit glaze instead of the lemon, which will also pair well with the cardamom. If you're like me and tend to stick to recipes as they're written, there are other ways to be adventurous without messing around with ingredients. With this recipe I simply changed the type of pan it was baked in. The original recipe called for a loaf pan but I decided to be adventurous, in my own way, and switch to a bundt pan. If you can't tell, I live life on the edge and take big risks. We've had the one I used for as long as I can remember. It's old, slightly dented, and the enamel coating on the outside has started to change colors over the years, but I wouldn't expect anything less for as often as it gets used.
Pistachio, Cardamom, and Lemon Drizzle Bundt Cake
Ingredients
½ cup ground pistachios
1 ¼ cups sunflower oil
1 ½ cups sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
1 tsp ground cardamom
zest from 2 lemons
1 ½ cups flour
½ cup almond flour
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
¼ cup + 2 tbsp. sour cream
Drizzle
1 cup sugar
juice from 2 lemons
Glaze
1 ¼ cups confectioners sugar
1-2 tbsp lemon juice
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 325F convection. Butter bundt pan.
2. In a large bowl, add the sunflower oil and caster sugar. Mix in the eggs, vanilla paste, ground cardamom and lemon zest. Stir until combined.
3. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, ground pistachios, ground almonds, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Stir until well combined.
4. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Fold in the sour cream.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
6. While your cake is baking, prepare the syrup. Heat the lemon juice and sugar in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves, then briefly bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and set aside.
7. As soon as the cake is done, poke holes all over the top using a skewer. Pour two-thirds of the hot syrup over the top and leave to cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes.
8. Once the cake is cooled, remove it from the pan and leave to rest on a wire rack.
9. For the lemon icing, sift the icing sugar into a small bowl and stir in the lemon juice until smooth. Drizzle over the cooled cake.
10. To finish, finely chop the remaining pistachios and scatter over the icing.
