Pistachio and lemon streusel cake

Cake cake cake. I wanted to make a different cake and chose to do a combination of a couple of favourite flavours / techniques to create this bad boy:

Pistachio and lemon are good friends. Something about the buttery freshness of pistachio seems to get on well with lemon. Other nice combos could be maple and pecan, apple and oatmeal with ginger, coconut and lime, or if you're feeling decadent macadamia and vanilla?

Streusel cake is a cake made with a crunchy topping (and in some cases filling) made of something resembling crumble topping, or breadcrumb based if you're of a more traditional mindset. This gives a nice bit of textural contrast to a soft cake, and they're traditionally baked in a ring tin. I see no reason why this recipe couldn't be quite happy in a different shaped tin though :)

The base of this recipe is a Hummingbird bakery version, but I've (as usual) changed things about a bit... below is what I did. The streusel is layered through the cake batter, then a lemon syrup is poured over after baking, then finally a glacé icing is added with nuts (and I put crystallised lemon peel) for final prettification.

Streusel:
80g plain flour
50g marg or softened butter
50g demerera sugar
zest of 1 lemon
85g chopped pistachios

Rub butter into flour and sugar, then stir in the nuts and zest. Set aside. It should look kind of like this...

Cake:

170g softened butter or margarine

250g caster sugar

3 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

300ml soured cream

420g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp bicarb

Pinch salt

Butter and flour a big (25-28cm diameter) ring tin (non stick is definitely best). Comme ça...

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then beat in one egg at a time (use an electric mixer of sorts or prepare for a very sore arm...). Then stir in the sour cream and vanilla until all mixed completely together. Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarb into the wet ingredients, then stir in the salt and give it a good beat until all combined. Now layer streusel and cake mix... Half of the streusel goes into the tin first (to form the crunchy topping), then half the cake batter, then rest of streusel, then rest of batter...

  Streusel, then cake... then streusel...

 then ready to bake! 

Bake at 170 degrees C (fan) for 1 hour until a skewer comes out clean.

Syrup:
juice of 1 lemon made up to 50ml with water, boiled up with 50g sugar for a minute until all dissolved. Once cake is out of the oven, pop lots of skewer holes in and pour syrup gently in, then leave the cake to cool in the tin.

Then turn it out...

Then ice with the juice of a lemon made up to icing consistency with icing sugar and sprinkle with pretty stuff. Yummy!!!






JB x

Tarte au Citron cupcakes...

...so this is what happens if you try to take one of the best french patisserie recipes ever and make it into a cupcake.

 A lemon sponge filled with lemon curd and topped with creme patissiere and a pastry beret.
It was nice, but could have been nicer - I needed more tangy lemon flavour, and a little less vanilla in the creme patisserie I think. So below id what I would do if I did it again!
1. Creme patissiere:
Basically a custard but with added cornflour to make it create a pipe-able consistency when chilled.
Mix 4 egg yolks with 65g cornflour and 50g caster sugar in a bowl to make a paste. Add a little bit of vanilla extract (ideally avec les seeds) but not too much... The, heat 350ml milk in a pan until just off the boil. Add a splosh of the milk to your eggy paste, whisky whisk whisk together, then add the paste back into the hot milk STIRRING ALL THE TIME! And I don't mean a polite little stir with a spoon, I mean a whacking great scrapey bottomy pan stir with a bendy spatula. It will thicken almost immediately if the milk is hot enough, but if not just keep stirring and it will get there. Once it's bubbled, cook for a few seconds and taste it to make sure it's not still powdery from the cornflour (if it is, heat it a little longer, still stirring all the time). When you're happy, chill it in a bowl of iced water, cover with clingfilm right against the surface of it to stop a skin forming and chill... I'd recommend at least 4 or 5 hours but a day or two is fine.

2. Sponge: Bog standard sponge (from Hummingbird bakery base):

• 240g plain flour
• 250g caster sugar
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 80g softened butter

Beat the above in a freestanding mixture until it looks like wet sand. I use salted butter - if you use unsalted please please add a decent pinch of salt. You'll thank me, I promise. When sand has been achieved, add:

• 240ml milk
• 2 large eggs
• zest of 1 large citron (lemon. It's cos c'est un recipe Francaise. J'apologise...)

Then when combined, bake in paper cases at 170 degrees C for 19 mins (ish, oven dependent, mine's un peu fierce...

Then you have this:

I'm an idiot and can't work out how to rotate this. Anyway, the little biscuity bits next to it are pastry discs made from 50g grated butter, 100g plain flour, 1 tbsp sugar rubbed together with an egg yolk added to bind. Dust with icing sugar and bake at 200 degrees for about 5-6 minutes (or buy some pastry or even little shortbready biscuity things).

Next, make temon syrup. I didn't do this and wished I had - basically juice of 1 lemon and a couple of tbsp of sugar heated until it dissolves, then stab the sponges with a skewer and drizzle a little bit of lemon syrup in. The cake should be very tangy to counteract the creme patisserie.

3. Curd au citron. Pretty sure that's not a thing. But lemon curd is, and it's DELICIOUS. Easy to make yourself, and only marginally easier to buy. If you do buy it, please buy a proper lemony one as opposed to the bright yellow waxy stuff which doesn't taste like it'd hurt if you put a finger with a papercut in it. If you want to make it, put 2 beaten eggs, 100g caster sugar, 50g butter and the juice of 2 lemons into a pan and heat gently again stirring all the time (you'll have a gun show by the end of this recipe!) until it's thick. This is lemon curd. It's this easy. You're welcome. You can add the zest in once it's thickened if you like, or not. Je ne sais pas. D'accord. 

4. Construction time...

Cake plus blob of curd in the middle (usual cut sponge, put in curd, replace spongey plug). Creme pat piped on top. Beret. Sugary zest for la 'je ne sais quoi'. Manger!

JB x