Pistachio Cake

This week's bake-through cake is the Sicilian Pistachio Cake. I love the flavour of pistachios so I was looking forward to making this cake. I made the buttercream on Friday evening and baked the cake on Saturday. By the way, the buttercream is wonderful! I used golden syrup and you can really taste it in the buttercream. I didn't use the pistachio essence because I didn't have it and it wasn't available at any of the stores in my area. The buttercream is a dream to spread and work with. It felt like a buttercream that would be easy to pipe with too. It's also pretty easy to make. I made the 9" cake because we were going to my cousin's for dinner and I brought the cake for dessert. During the evening I didn't see the cake in the kitchen so I figured he had left it in the dining room. After dinner, he brought out the cake and it had been in the fridge all that time. A butter cake frosted with a buttercream that actually has butter in it eaten straight out of the fridge. What a disaster! I could have cried. Everyone ate the cake and said it was really good but I know it didn't taste the way it should have. I ate a piece but to be honest I didn't really taste any flavour in it. Even the buttercream that tasted heavenly at room temperature was one solid stick of butter in my mouth. About 1/4 of the cake was left. Since I hadn't taken any pictures of the cut cake, I called my cousin's wife the next day and asked if she could take a picture of it for me. There was no cake left! It was left on the counter top overnight and of course it was the perfect temperature. So she and my cousin had eaten it for breakfast because it was so good. I guess I'll have to make it again some time so that I could really taste it.

Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake

I am seriously late with this bake-through recipe. I baked it on time, just neglected to post it.

This was a pretty easy cake to put together. I reduced the poppyseeds to 40g. The cake was very good but it was the syrup that did it (for me). I also liked the contrast in texture that the poppyseeds added.

My husband loved the cake and so did our neighbours. One of our neighbours said it actually tasted like lemon unlike the lemon poppyseed muffins she buys. She said her first thought was "oh, so this is how it's supposed to taste".