Honey and Lemon Cake with Pistachios

The weather has been pretty miserable today and an afternoon in the kitchen seemed like the best way to make use of the Bank Holiday. I first tasted this cake a couple of weeks ago and have been eagerly awaiting the recipe ever since, luckily it turned up just in time.

280g unsalted butter, softened
Rind of 1 lemon, grated
440g golden caster sugar
6 eggs, beaten
170g sour cream
300g plain flour
35g self raising flour
1tsp baking powder
Juice of 1 lemon
80g pistachio nuts (original recipe stated pine nuts)
1tbsp demerara sugar
90g honey

Preheat oven to 170 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, beat butter, lemon rind and sugar together until soft.  Slowly add the beaten eggs ensuring that each addition is incorporated before adding more.

Stir in the sour cream.

In a separate bowl, combine plain flour, self raising flour and baking powder and add this a tablespoon at a time to the large mixing bowl.

Add the lemon juice and continue to mix until incorporated.

Transfer the cake mixture to a large, greased tin and bake in the oven for 15 minutes.

While the cake is baking, toast some pistachio nuts and leave to cool. Mix the cooled nuts together with the demerara sugar and set aside.

When the cake has cooked for the initial 15 minutes, remove from the oven and gently press in the nut and sugar mixture.

Bake for a further 45 minutes.

I had some trouble pushing the nut and sugar mixture down into the cake which meant that the nuts went rather brown. I’m not sure how to avoid this next time, perhaps add them later on. I don’t think the sugar was all that necessary either although I did use dark sugar rather than demerara which didn’t melt in the same way demerara would have done. My version was darker than the one I ate recently too which may be due to our oven.

It’s a good tasting cake though and the dampness means that it’s quite forgiving, even with our dodgy oven, it still didn’t dry out.

Remove cake from the oven and drizzle with the honey.