Recipe Sun May 20 2007

Cardamom Pistachio Coffee Cake

I'm a big fan of crumbly-topped cakes. When I was thinking about making a cake for a brunch party today, I thought of topping it with a streusel of pistachios ground with olive oil and emitting the certain gentle and lingering fragrance that only comes from cardamom. Thanks to plenty of coconut and olive oil, the cake is especially rich and moist with a terrific crumb.

The batter comes modified from the coconut cake on last year's Veggie Bike and Cook: a coconut cardamom pistachio cake. Replace all of the canola oil with olive oil for good measure. You'll get two cakes because that recipe is designed for stacking into a double-layer cake, but there's no need to stack this time. Forget the icing or frosting and use the streusel noted here - modified from the coffee cake topping in the Voluptuous Vegan.

Cake Batter
Cake batter from 1 coconut cardamom pistachio cake recipe - olive oil instead of canola (yields two cakes)

Streusel
1 cup salted pistachios, shells removed
1+1/2 cup all purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat oven to 350F. Oil and flour two springform pans. Make the cake batter as in the coconut cardamom pistachio cake recipe.

For the streusel, finely grind pistachios in a food processor, and then slowly add flour and process until smooth. Add sugar, cardamom, baking powder and salt and process until combined. Add olive oil and process until evenly moist from the oil.

Pour one-half the batter into each springform. Crumble one-half of the streusel over each and bake for 50-60 minutes, or until a fork comes out clean. If the streusel becomes golden before the cake is done, cover with aluminum foil to keep the top from burning. Serve with Arabic coffee for maximum cardamom intake.

The streusel started as that from the date pecan coffee cake in the Voluptuous Vegan, cardamom substituted for cinnamon, pistachios for pecans, 10 tablespoons olive oil (1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons) from 12 tablespoons canola oil, and all purpose flour for whole wheat pastry flour - recipe doubled.

— Chris Brunn / Comments (2)