Homemade Pistachio Loaf Recipe

I have adapted this recipe is taken from the Hummingbird bakery's cook book Cake Days; this is the fourth recipe I've tried and the loaf turned out s’moreish, it goes without saying that you have to be a fan of pistachios to like this so don’t bake it if your audience?!/family/customer don’t like the taste of pistachios...Or worse are allergic to them.

Pistachio Loaf Recipe

Ingredients:

190g unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing

190g plain flour, plus extra for dusting in my version I used brown flour, (to be healthy) and now that I’m used to the taste of brown flour I actually dislike white flour-who’d have thought?!

190g caster sugar, I just use regular sugar, the one we get here isn’t very coarse (again a helatheir option would be brown sugar)

3 large eggs

1tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

25ml sour cream 45ml if you are using brown flour *if you can’t find sour cream, (it’s not available in KSA then just add a tsp of white vinegar to equivalent 45ml of fresh cream and let stand for 5 mins)

1 tsp vanilla essence

100g shelled pistachios roughly chopped

One 8.5cm x 17.5 cm loaf tin with 7.5cm sides

OR One 3.5inches x 7 inches loaf tin with 3 inch sides

For the glaze

120g icing sugar

40g ground pistachios

Method:

1.Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius/325 F/ Gas Mark 3,then grease loaf tin with butter and dust with flour. Don’t be skimp on the flour, it gives the loaf the beautiful brown crust on the outside.

 2. Using a hand held electric whisk or a freestanding electric mixer with the paddle attachement, cream together butter and  sugar, until the mixture is soft and fluffy.

Add the eggs one at a time, whisking well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure that the eggs and batter are properly mixed in.

4. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour baking powder and salt.

    Divide the dry ingredients into 2 bowls.

 Tip the first bowl into the creamed mixture and whisk on slow speed until just incorporated.

Repeat with the second bowl. Next mix in the sour cream and vanilla essence.

Stir in the chopped pistachios by hand.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin.

 Place in the oven and bake for 50-60mins or until the sponge is firm on top and a skewer inserted into the centre turns out clean (it took me 63mins).

Remove from the oven and allow the loaf to cool a little before turning it out of the tin on to a wire rack to cool completely, before applying the glaze.

6. Place the icing sugar in a bowl; add 2Tablespoons of water and mix together. This will form a fairly runny paste, if the glaze seems to thick add a little more water 1/4tsp at a time. Stir in the ground pistachios keeping a small amount aside to sprinkle on top. Pour the glaze of the cooled loaf and sprinkle with remain pistachios.

Confession: I skimped on the glaze, as my family doesn’t enjoy glaze’s much, they find it too sweet, and so my loaf doesn’t look as glazed as it should.

Let me know how your turns out if you try it.