Pistachio Torte With Lemon Cardamom Glaze Recipes

PISTACHIO TORTE

Steps:

• For the crust, mix together the flour, butter and nuts.
• Press in the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan.
• Bake at 325 for 15 minutes.
• Let cool.
• Mix the cream cheese, powdered sugar and 1 cup cool whip.
• Spread on top of crust.
• Mix well the pudding and milk.
• Pour on top of cream cheese mixture and let set.
• Top with remaining cool whip.
• May top with chopped nuts if desired.

PISTACHIO TORTE WITH LEMON-CARDAMOM GLAZE

Steps:

• Make torte: Preheat oven to 375°F and butter a 9-inch springform pan. Line bottom of pan with a round of wax paper and butter paper.
• In a food process or blender finely grind pistachios with 3/4 cup of sugar. Transfer mixture to a large bowl and stir in flour, butter, zest, vanilla, and almond extract. In another bowl with an electric mixer, beat whites with salt until they barely hold soft peaks and gradually beat in remaining 1/4 cup sugar until meringue just holds stiff peaks. Stir one third of meringue into pistachio mixture to lighten and fold in remaining meringue gently but thoroughly. Pour batter into pan.
• Bake torte in middle of oven 40 minutes, or until it pulls away from side of pan and top is golden brown. Cool torte in pan on rack 10 minutes. Run a knife around edge of pan and remove side. Invert torte onto rack and remove bottom of pan. Carefully peel off wax paper and cool torte completely. Torte may be prepared up to this point 1 day ahead and kept wrapped well in plastic wrap in an airtight container at room temperature (I have found it also freezes well).
• Make glaze: in small bowl whisk together the confectioners' sugar, lemon juice, and cardamom until smooth. Drizzle over top of torte and let drip down the side.
• Garnish top with chopped pistachios and let glaze set. Recipe suggests serving with ice cream, but I never have.

PISTACHIO, CARDAMOM AND LEMON DRIZZLE CAKE

Steps:

• Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Grease and line a 900g/2lb loaf tin.
• In a food processor, pulse the pistachios to make a powder.
• In a large bowl, mix together the sunflower oil and caster sugar. Add the eggs, vanilla paste, ground cardamom and lemon zest. Stir until combined.
• In a separate bowl, add the flour, ground pistachios, ground almonds, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate soda. Stir until well combined then fold into the wet ingredients in the other bowl. Fold in the soured cream.
• Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
• Meanwhile, prepare the syrup. Heat the lemon juice and sugar in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved, then briefly bring to the boil. Remove from the heat and set aside.
• As soon as the cake is cooked, poke holes all over the top using a skewer. Pour over two-thirds of the hot syrup and leave to cool in the tin. Add half the extra pistachios (for decorating the cake) to the remaining syrup.
• When the cake is cool, remove it from the tin.
• For the lemon icing, sift the icing sugar into a bowl and stir in the lemon juice until smooth. Drizzle over the cooled cake.
• To finish, finely chop the remaining pistachios and scatter over the icing. Top with the syrup-coated pistachios and some dried rose petals.