Cakes & Cupcakes
Pistachio and Lemon Traybake
A pistachio and lemon traybake, with a wonderfully moist, dense-textured sponge adorned with a whipped lemon custard and swirls of lemon curd.
Pistachios are having a moment online, with the whole viral Dubai chocolate craze. But with the plethora of pistachio/chocolate content, I wanted to divert from the herd culture and do something a bit different. Also, the popularity of pistachios means that they are a fair bit more expensive in comparison to some other nuts, and I have tried to create a recipe that is accessible to many, and bake this as a 20cm traybake, rather than a layered cake.
Whilst traybakes are seen as more rustic, novice bakes relative to their fancier tiered cake counterparts, I think that these can be equally pretty. Plus, they have the added benefit of easily being able to feed a crowd. If you need to feed a crowd, you can double the recipe, bake it in a 22cm by 33cm tray and increase the baking time by a further 10 minutes.
The pistachio and lemon flavours pair particularly well together. The cake itself is more pistachio than lemon, with only a slight hint of zest in the cake batter. The lemon flavour gets layered on in the form of the lemon syrup which is brushed onto the cake after baking. This not only adds depth of flavour to the cake, but also keeps the sponges moist (why do people not like using that word?).
The whipped lemon custard is really special, I feel, and is a nice alternative to the more conventional cream cheese icing, or worse, a cloyingly sweet buttercream. It is almost like a whipped cream, but with a more subtle lemon flavour added. Finally, I like to finish this off with swirls of lemon curd and a sprinkling of chopped pistachios around the border of the cake. It takes a very ordinary traybake to something Instagram-worthy.
The recipe
Pistachio and Lemon Traybake
adventureswithsugar.com/pistachio-and-lemon-traybake/
Method
Method: pistachio and lemon traybake
- Prepare the tin: Preheat the oven to 180˚ Celsius and grease and line the base and sides of a 20cm square tin with baking paper.
- Flavour the sugar: Rub the lemon zest and caster sugar together, with your fingertips. This releases all the oils within the zest and smells incredibly fragrant.
- Cream the butter: Then add in the butter, and cream with the sugar and lemon zest. Cream the ingredients for around 5 minutes until the mixture is smooth and the butter has turned a paler shade, turning almost cream from the initial yellow.
- Add the eggs: Add the eggs in, one at a time. Add the next one only once the previous has been fully incorporated. The mixture will look fairly curdled at this point, but it will all come together at the end when the flour is added.
- Add the wet ingredients: Add in the vanilla, almond essence, olive oil, sour cream and lemon curd. Beat to combine all of the ingredients. The mixture will still look curdled, but that is still fine.
- Combine the dry ingredients: In a separate bowl, sift the self-raising flour and baking powder together, then add in the ground almonds and ground pistachios. Aerate the batter with a whisk to ensure that all the nuts are evenly distributed.
- Fold together: Slowly add the flour and nut mixture to the wet ingredients and gently fold by hand to combine, until there are no streaks of flour remaining and the nuts are evenly dispersed through the batter.
- Bake: Pour into your baking tin and bake for 30 – 35 minutes, until the cake is golden brown and a skewer inserted comes out clean. Begin checking for doneness at around 25 minutes.
- Start the syrup: As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, begin working on the syrup.
- Cool and turn out: Once the cake comes out of the oven, let it cool in the tin for 10 minutes, before loosening the edges with a butter knife and inverting it onto a cooling rack. The bottom of the cake should now be facing upward so that you have a smooth top.
Method: lemon syrup
- Time it: Once the cake has come out of the oven, and is cooling in the tin, get to work on the syrup.
- Combine the ingredients: Simply place all the ingredients in a medium heatproof saucepan and whisk to combine.
- Warm gently: Then gently heat until the sugar is just dissolved. You are not trying to boil the syrup like a conventional recipe – so the syrup will only be warm to touch.
- Set up for brushing: I find that the best way to brush the cake is to place the cooling rack over a larger tray, so you can catch the syrup which drips off, scrape it off the tray and re-brush it onto the cake.
- Brush the cake: Brush half of the syrup on the top and the four sides of the cake and let it soak in. Then repeat until all the syrup has been used up.
- Let cool: Allow the cake to cool for a further 30 minutes. Then, if you want to lock in the moisture, wrap the cake in cling wrap/plastic wrap and leave to cool completely.
Method: lemon curd cream
- Time it: Once the cake is in the oven, begin making the lemon curd cream.
- Heat the milk: Place the milk in a medium heatproof saucepan and heat the milk on medium heat, until the milk is just simmering, but not boiling over.
- Whisk the yolk mixture: Whilst the milk is heating, place all the ingredients, except the whipping cream and lemon curd, in a bowl and whisk vigorously to combine. It may initially seem like there are too many dry ingredients relative to the egg yolks, but eventually it will come together.
- Temper the eggs: Take the simmering milk off the stove and slowly stream in half of the milk into the egg mixture, tempering the eggs so they do not scramble. Then once the eggs have adjusted to the warmer temperature of the milk, pour in the remaining milk and give everything a quick whisk to combine.
- Thicken the custard: Return this custard mixture to the saucepan on medium heat, and whisk constantly until the custard begins to thicken completely. Remove from the heat, scrape into a bowl. The custard is quite thick, but you have not done anything wrong, it is going to get whipped with the cream later.
- Cool: To quicken the cooling process, place a film of cling wrap/plastic wrap directly on the surface of the custard and place in the fridge to cool.
- Prepare to whip: Once the custard (and the cake is cool) and you are ready to frost the cake, place the custard in a large bowl, as you will be adding the whipping cream to it.
- Add a third of the cream: Add a third of the whipping cream, and beat using a hand-held beater. This should break up the custard and begin to form a smooth cream. Do not overwhip.
- Add the remaining cream: Then add in the remaining cream and continue to whip until you have a looser cream, but still one that will hold its shape when spread on the cake.
- Add the lemon curd: Add in the lemon curd and continue to beat for a few seconds, tasting to see how much you prefer. I prefer to go with 2 tablespoons, as more lemon curd gets swirled on the top after.
Method: assembly
- Check your components: By now, you will have a cooled cake which is bathed in the delicious lemon syrup and a delicious, lightly lemony cream.
- Spread the cream: Begin by spreading the cream onto the cake and creating little swirls on the top. It is easiest to spread the cream with a palette knife and squaring off the edges so that it looks to be in line with the cake. The swirls are easier to create with the back of a tablespoon, so they create little dips to drop some dollops of lemon curd into.
- Swirl in the lemon curd: Spoon on the lemon curd in little dollops all over the cake, and continue to swirl to combine. This creates a pretty marbled effect.
- Chop the pistachios: Finally, chop some pistachios by hand. I like to do this by hand so that you get more chunky pieces for texture, but you can use more finely ground if you prefer.
- Scatter the pistachios: Scatter along the edge of the cake, almost creating a little frame to finish off the traybake.
- Add flowers (optional): You could also arrange a few edible flowers on one of the corners of the cake, for an extra special touch, but I did not have any.
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