Recipe Pistachio-Blueberry Cake

Hemulen

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Pistachio-Blueberry Cake
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Serves 10-12 | Preparation 2 hours

Ingredients / Crust

2 tablespoons of butter and a handful of breadcrumbs or almond flour to line the cake tin
100 g (~105 ml) salted butter
120 ml (60-65 g) unsalted, peeled pistachios (*+ 95 ml/50 g for garnish)
255 ml (130 g) plain flour/APF
200 ml (~170 g) caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
100 g/ml crème fraîche
0,5 teaspoon baking powder
0,5 teaspoon baking soda
Zest and juice of 1 lime
Zest of 1 lemon
2 eggs

Instructions / Crust

Set the oven to 175°C (350°F, gas mark 4, no fan) and line a ø 24-26 cm, high-edged cake tin or oven pan with butter and breadcrumbs. Melt the butter in the microwave (~30 seconds) and leave it to cool. Grind the pistachios in a blender/mixer into fine powder; (if using a pestle & mortar, crush the pistachios first in a plastic bag with a mallet or hammer). Divide the powder into two. Grate the citrus zests and squeeze the lime juice. Separate the egg yolks and egg whites. Beat the egg whites into stiff foam and keep the froth separate. Mix the egg yolks, sugar and lime juice and whip them carefully on low speed until they form a fluffy curd. Mix the baking powder and baking soda with the plain flour and half of the pistachio powder. Mix the crème fraîche with the egg yolk-sugar-lime juice mix and add the cooled butter, citrus zests and vanilla extract. Add the flour-pistachio mix little by little and mix well. Lastly, fold in the whipped egg whites and turn carefully until the dough is even and blended. Spoon the dough into the lined tin and bake in the lower part of the oven for ~50 minutes until done and nicely browned. Let cool in the tin.

Ingredients / Filling-Topping & Garnish

25 g (~25 ml) softened, salted butter
50 ml (~43 g) caster sugar
200 ml (~200 g) double/heavy cream
260 ml (~250 g) mascarpone cheese
The rest of the pistachio powder (~60 ml)
125 g (~155 ml) blueberries, 100 g of which for garnish
1,5 teaspoons of vanilla extract
*95 ml (50 g) whole pistachios for garnish
200-270 g (150-200 ml) blueberry jam (8 super-heaped tablespoons)
200-250 ml cashew milk (or skimmed milk) to moisten the cake crust
A few bare stalks of mint (leaves removed) for garnish
50 ml gelling sugar/jam sugar (pectin-sugar mix)
100 ml water

Instructions / Filling and Decoration

Crush a small portion (~25 g) of the blueberries with a fork. Save the rest for garnish. Lather the butter and caster sugar into white, buttery foam on slow speed. In a separate bowl, whip the cream into soft foam. Mix the mascarpone cheese with the cream and whip for a few seconds. Add the butter-sugar foam, pistachio powder, crushed blueberries and vanilla extract and mix with a spoon.

Turn the lukewarm cake crust on a baking sheet and cut it into three layers. Move the first layer (cake bottom) on a serving plate and moisten it well with cashew milk. Spread 4 heaped tablespoons of blueberry jam on top. Leave 1,5 cm of the edges clear/empty. Spread approximately a fourth of the cream-mascarpone-pistachio filling on top. Put the second layer on and press gently. Moisten and repeat the jam-froth filling on the second layer. Moisten the third layer with cashew milk and cover the whole cake with the rest of the mascarpone-pistachio cream. Pile whole blueberries on top of each other in the middle of the cake to form a giant blueberry. Use mint stalks and whole pistachios to form stems and leaves. Heat 100 ml water in a small pan, add 50 ml gelling sugar (or according to package instructions) and mix well. Take aside, bring to boil for a second time, take aside and mix occasionally while cooling. Add the warm, semi-congealed sugar glaze on top of the blueberries and pistachios with a tablespoon and let set. Serve with tea of coffee.

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That's really pretty. I don't care for blueberries but I bet this would be awesome for someone that does. Thanks for posting it. Your recipes are always so interesting.
 
. I don't care for blueberries
The wild ones through the forests of Finland (in season) are totally unlike shop bought ones and actually have flavour. They grow with the wild cranberries in huge quantities.

But there is no reason why you can't replace them with a soft berry fruit of your choice. I think raspberries would work really well (or cloudberries, another wild fruit found in the very fast north of Norway, Sweden and Finland). They would be sublime on this cake!
 
The wild ones through the forests of Finland (in season) are totally unlike shop bought ones and actually have flavour. They grow with the wild cranberries in huge quantities.

But there is no reason why you can't replace them with a soft berry fruit of your choice. I think raspberries would work really well (or cloudberries, another wild fruit found in the very fast north of Norway, Sweden and Finland). They would be sublime on this cake!
I can't grow anything to save my life. LOL I have had them from our grocery store and local Farmer's Market but there is just something. I don't know. It's just me so I'll have to figure out how to make this with berries in a smaller portion. I'm thinking I could do about six cupcakes. It does look very inviting!
 
Supermarket blueberries might be the one produce item that's actually worse than supermarket tomatoes, if that can be believed.

My grandad grew blueberries, and I'm thankful that I had the chance to eat proper blueberries; if I had to set my palate based on supermarket blueberries, I'd be convinced they were purposely tart and bitter.
 
Beautiful, plus I love the combo of blueberries and citrus (though, after reading the replies, I wonder if I even know what a real blueberry tastes like).
A lot of our supermarket blueberries come from Michigan, so I'm betting if you just get them locally from a farmer's market, you'll be doing better than a lot of us.
 
The wild blueberries (and cranberries) that grow in the forests of Finland are that good that men drive up in 1 vehicle each from Poland to pick (harvest), pick them over and dry them before driving home again vehicles full of them. We encountered this many times on our attempted world cycle tour. The blueberries there were like nothing I've tasted in supermarkets. Those are often watery and tasteless to me.

In one place somewhere around the north of the Norwegian Arctic Circle we actually came across an entire Gypsy community on one campsite (no litter whatsoever and very welcoming, not hostile at all unlike the ones I know around my family home town area) where they went north every summer to pick berries and turn it into cordial or alcohol depending on what was being made because they sold it through the rest of the year. The berries they picked were mostly cloudberries a very far north (as in tundra) berry that is a Scandinavian delicacy.
 
That's really pretty. I don't care for blueberries but I bet this would be awesome for someone that does. Thanks for posting it. Your recipes are always so interesting.
I decorated this cake with store-bought, imported blueberries (which don't really taste that good). The jam was Finnish, though - made from local berries which are much smaller, have a more intense, pleasant taste, a dark blue coating and a juicy, dark purple core. The Finnish blueberries are actually called bilberries (Vaccinium myrtillus) and the shrubby cultivated ones (which we grow at our summer place too) are blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum). Their core/inside is almost colorless and not that juicy.

Bilberries:
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