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.
