Hi,
this cake ended up as THE BEST cake (according to my husband) I’ve ever made. It was inspired by Vert-Vert cake or Monet’s green cake. I wanted to combine pistachio cake with some fruit flavour and decided to use dried apricots. This is how I did it.

Ingredients for Pistachio Cake

7 Tbsp pistachios – it should be around 1/4 cup pistachios
7 Tbsp gluten-free flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
5 medium eggs
5 Tbsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla (or 1 vanilla bean)
a handful of spinach
water
200 (100) g dried apricots (cause I eat 100g and use 100g in cake)
1 leaf of gelatine
200 mL cream for whipping
4(3) Tbsp powder sugar

Make the spinach coloring

The first thing we will make the spinach colouring by putting spinach into a small bowl and blanching it with1/2 cup of boiling water. When the spinach is done (1-2 minutes). Put it into a blender and blend with the blanching hot water to produce the green juice/ smoothie. It should be more water than puree. Then strain the spinach through a small strainer or muslin cloth to remove all of the solids. Leave to cool down.

Make the pistachio cake sponge

Line a small baking sheet (28 x 28 cm) with baking paper and heat your oven to 170 °C (350 °F). Do NOT use the fan even if your oven has it. It will mess up the thickness of the batter. This batter is very light. Bake it in the setting of the upper and lower heater at the mentioned temperature.

Put the pistachios and flour into a blender and blend until it looks like a green flour. Pistachios should get as small as possible. They should be powder-like. Mix in the baking powder at the end.

Now put eggs into a bowl, add brown sugar and vanilla and mix them on high speed until the eggs are completely foamed up. They should almost look like a sponge. Then start adding 1 spoon at the time, the pistachio-flour mixture. After you added 3-4 Tbsp start alternating it with spinach colouring. 1 Tbsp pistachio flour – 1 Tbsp spinach until all is combined. You should use approx 10 Tbsp of coloring. Make sure that colouring does not dilute the batter too much.

When batter is mixed up, put it on a prepared baking sheat and bake in the oven until done. It should take you between 10 and 15 minutes.

For the first 10 minutes don’t open the oven. after 10 minutes you can test the donness with a skewer. IF the skewer comes out clean it is done. The sponge should be lightly browned and springy to the touch. it should not feel dry.

As soon as the sponge is done take it out of the oven and leave it for 5 minutes to cool down. Then I layered one bigger sheet pan with baking paper and carefully flip sponge. Leave it to cool down completely.

Whip the cream and make the puree

To make dried apricot puree put the gelatin leaf to water and leave to hydrate. Then add 100 g of dried apricots, while eating the rest to the blender and blend with a little bit of water to a smooth puree. You can than heat it up a bit and dissolve the gelatin. Or you can dissolve the gelatin in hot water (cca 2 Tbsp of water) then add it to the puree. Put the puree into the piping bag and leave to cool down.

Whip the cream with powder sugar until stiff peaks form. Put it into a piping bag with medium round tip.

Assembly of the pistachio cake

I cut the sponge into 3 long strips. Then stack them up and trim them so they are the same size. Take one strip then pipe the whipping cream into ball shapes. Covering the entire length, but the balls should just touch each other. There should be spaces between the four balls. Pipe the apricot puree into the spaces between the whipped cream balls.

Put the layer to the freezer for 5 minutes so that whipped cream and apricot puree firm a bit. Then put the next layer of sponge and repeat the pattern with whipped cream and apricot puree. Add the assembled cake to the freezer again. After 5 minutes take it out and put the last layer on and repeat with whipped cream and apricot puree. Then put it into the fridge to cool. Slice it into slices and serve. Enjoy 🙂