Pistachio Loaf Cake

A sinfully delicious rich cake. Though I don't fancy pistachio at all, I just loved the heady combination of Pistachio and citrus.

While searching for the perfect recipe of a Pistachio cake , I came across Rachel Allen's recipe. I tweaked it a little after having taken inputs from other recipes   The original recipe is  here

Please reads the notes at the end of the recipe carefully before starting. 

Ingredients

Pistachios                       150 gms/ 1 cup

All purpose flour.             225 gms

Baking powder                1 tsp

Butter                            100 gms  , at room temp.

Oil.                                2 tbsp

Castor  sugar.                  150 gms

Granulated sugar             75 gms

Eggs                               4

Milk.                              100 ml

Orange zest.                   2 tsp

Lemon zest.                   1 tsp

Method:

1. Grease  a 9 by 5 inch loaf tin and line with parchment paper.
2. Coarsely grind pistachio in a food processor. Keep  larger pieces (25gms) aside and tip rest in a bowl.
3. Sift All Purpose flour and baking powder over the ground pistachios. Mix well.
4. Beat butter till light . Add sugar and oil and beat well till light and fluffy.
5. Add eggs one by one and beat well after each addition.
6. Add zest and beat.
7. Lightly fold in the dry ingredients and milk alternately in three installments.
8. Pour the batter in the prepared tin and smooth-en the surface with a spatula.
9. Sprinkle the remaining  pistachio  on top.
10. Bake in a pre heated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 40 min. or till done. Do the skewer test to check doneness .
11. Let the cake rest in the pan for five min and then carefully take it out .
12. Cool it on a wire rack.
13. Slice and serve after it has completely cooled.

Notes :

1.  All ingredients should be at room temperature .
2.  I felt the batter was a little more for the loaf tin, so i prepared four mini cup cake  moulds with the extra batter. But the cake didn't rise like most cakes, so next time I'll bake the entire batter in the loaf tin.   
3. I used a mixture of salted and unsalted pistachio because I have whole load of salted pistachio in my pantry. Simply rub the salted pistachio in a kitchen towel. This will reduce the salt.
4. The original recipe has only castor sugar but I have used a mix of  both castor and fine granulated.
5. There is no oil in the original recipe but while beating butter and sugar I felt the mixture was quite dry so I added 2 tbsp oil.
6. While adding eggs the batter might curdle a bit but don't worry and proceed further.
7. The original recipe also has a glaze. It makes the cake soggy which none of us like at home. Hence I am not mentioning it here.
8.  It's wonderful as it is with tea or coffee.
9. If serving as a dessert , you can also serve it with whipped cream.