Pistachio cake

Diving into the mesmerizing world of mirror glazing with a fresh pistachio-infused recipe! 😍

Required recipes

• Chocolate sable cookie ⌀ 5cm (optional)

• Pistachio praline

• Raspberry ganache

Both the pistachio praline and the chocolate sable can be prepared in advance (even more than 1 week before).

Equipment

• Cake mold. Here I'm using Silikomart Essenziale 80

• Tart ring. I'm using ⌀ 7.5cm from DeBuyer

• Pastry cutter ⌀ 5cm

• Acetate stripes

• Green velvet spray. Here I'm using this one from Silikomart (optional)

Suggested schedule

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Day 1

Raspberry ganache

You can find the recipe here. It's important to have it ready on Day 2, so I recommend to prepare it on Day 1. In practice this preparation is optional. Raspberry works really well with pistachio and gives some freshness. Nothing prevents from replacing it with other pistachio.

Whipped pistachio ganache

45g Heavy cream 35% fat (1)

20g Whole milk

45g Pistachio praline. You can also use a high quality pistachio paste here.

1 Gelatine sheet

50g White chocolate

105g Cold heavy cream 35% fat (2)

1. Re-hydrate the gelatine in cold water

2. Add pistachio praline, milk and heavy cream (1) to a saucepan on a low heat

3. Add the white chocolate and the re-hydrated gelatine and mix with a spatula

4. Add the cold cream (2) and mix with a hand blender. Target is just to incorporate (and not to emulsify) so a few seconds are enough.

5. Let to set in the fridge overnight.

6. Whip to medium peak when you're ready to assemble the cake.

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Day 2

Assembly pt. 1

1. Place the pastry cutter on parchment paper and coat the inner surface with an acetate stripe.

2. Fill the pastry cutter with raspberry ganache and then with the pistachio praline. Be careful here with the height. The whole cylinder should fit into the cake mold. Exaggerating with praline or ganache might prevent that.

3. Freeze overnight. You can speed up the process if you have a blast freezer or if you do this preparation in the morning and let it rest in the freezer for at least 6 hours before proceeding to the next steps.

It's worth mentioning that there are different options to handle the cake filling. The one I just proposed is the safest one to keep a proper ingredients proportion and have more control on the final outcome. However it is also the longest process, since it requires to freeze the filling before placing it into the cake. As an alternative you can also pipe the whipped pistachio ganache and create a cavity where to place the unfrozen raspberry ganache and pistachio praline praline.

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Day 3

Assembly pt. 2

1. Whip the pistachio ganache to medium peak and pour it into a piping bag.

2. Fill half of the cake mold with the pistachio ganache, then insert a frozen cylinder with raspberry ganache and pistachio praline on the side of the praline. It's important that the praline is on the bottom (so on the top of the cake). Target is to have the raspberry ganache sealing it inside the cake.

3. (optional) Place a chocolate sable cookie on top of the raspberry ganache.

4. Freeze overnight.

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Day 4

You can glaze the whole cake with the chocolate mirror glaze described below. In my case, I did it just for half of the cake. For the other half I used a velvet spray, specifically this one from Silikomart.

Chocolate mirror glazing (by Louise Lindberg)

I kept quantities as they are reported in the original recipe, but you can adapt depending on the amount of cakes that you want to prepare. It's safer anyway to have a good amount of glaze. That's because you will need to pour it over the cake and this will lead to lose some.

1 gelatine sheet (1 sheet = 1,75 g)

100g heavy cream

50g water

145g caster sugar

150g glucose syrup

50g cocoa powder

1. Soak gelatine in cold water for 5-10 min

2. Sift the cocoa powder into a plastic pitcher

3. Heat sugar, water, heavy cream and glucose syrup in a saucepan almost to a boil and remove from the heat. Whip the gelatine in the mixture.

4. Pour over the cocoa powder in the pitcher and hand blend (place the hand blender at an angle when blending to avoid air bubbles)

5. Cover the surface with cling film and cool the glaze down to 34°C - 35C°

Assembly pt. 3

1. Take the cake out of the freezer right before you are ready to glaze. Place it on a baking rack with parchment paper underneath.

2. Pour the glaze over the frozen cake. Use two palette knives to remove the glaze excess from the bottom of the cake.

3. Place the cake on a plate and let it thaw in the fridge for approx. 3 hours (time here depends on the size of the cake).