This delectable Almond and Pistachio Cake with Pears, Lemon and Cardamom is bursting with the flavours of spring. A light, moist almond and pistachio sponge with lemon and cardamom is topped with a layer of softly cooked pears and finished with a lemon icing and chopped, roast pistachio nuts.
Collect together your equipment (see Recipe Notes below) and ingredients.
Preheat oven to fan oven 160°C /180°C/350°F/Gas 4
Make the cake: weigh out the pistachios for the cake and the topping onto a baking sheet and cook in a preheated oven for 5 minutes and set aside.
Weigh the butter into a microwave safe bowl or jug and blitz, in 15 second increments, to melt. Alternatively, melt in a saucepan on the hob. Set aside to cool.
Tip 50g pistachios into a food processor and blitz until finely ground, like ground almonds.
Weigh all the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl – the ground pistachios, almonds, flour, sugar, baking powder, cardamom and salt. Mix well.
Grate the lemon zest into the butter and add the eggs and vanilla. Beat to mix.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold to mix. Tip into a lined 20cm/8in round, lined cake tin and level the surface.
Peel and quarter the pears, remove the core and slice each quarter.
Lay the pear slices evenly on the cake batter.
Bake in the centre of a pre-heated oven for 45 – 50 minutes or until the cake is cooked and the pears are soft.
Remove from the oven and after 10 minutes, transfer to a cooling rack. I leave mine in the baking parchment. Set aside to cool.
Now prepare the topping: gradually add the lemon juice to the icing sugar until it is smooth and reaches pouring consistency.
Use the spoon to drizzle the icing over the cake.
Roughly chop the remaining pistachio nuts and scatter over the cake.
To serve: delicious with a cup of tea or coffee but it also makes a fabulous dessert, served with cream or ice cream.
Equipment:
Where is this cake from?
This wonderful recipe is a slightly adapted recipe from a fabulous blog I follow, called The Brick Kitchen, or on insta as @claudiabrick. The original recipe is topped with apricots, but they were not in season in the UK so I used pears, and they worked perfectly. I will definitely be making it again with apricots in the summer though.