Nigella Lawson Pistachio Cake With Pear And Rose Recipe
No flour but plenty of flowers make for Nigella Lawson's crowd-pleasing dessert
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With her flowing prose and relatable recipe titles (Emergency Brownies, for one), every Nigella Lawson cookbook feels like a personal gift. Her latest, At My Table, is no exception—it's full of recipes you'll want to make rightthisverymoment, and, thanks to their accessibility, you can.
This cake comes together in a food processor, happens to be gluten free and has enough fruit that it works with a cup of morning coffee. The flower petal decoration takes it over the top but in the best way: You went through all the trouble of making a cake, so you might as well show it off.
Use extra pistachios to make a nutty feta dip, then try our other favorite Nigella Lawson dessert.
Excerpted from the book At My Table, by Nigella Lawson. Copyright © 2018 by Nigella Lawson. Reprinted with permission from Flatiron Books. All rights reserved.
- For the Cake
- Vegetable oil, for greasing
- 1 cup sugar
- ¾ cup shelled pistachios
- 1 pound (approximately 3) thin-skinned pears, such as Bartlett, cored and cut into chunks, skin on
- 2 cups fine almond flour
- 1½ teaspoons baking powder
- 6 large eggs, room temperature
- 1½ teaspoons rosewater
- For the Topping
- 2 teaspoons apricot preserves
- ½ teaspoon lemon juice
- ½ teaspoon rosewater
- For Decorating
- Chopped pistachios
- Edible rose petals
- Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease the sides of a 9-inch springform cake pan and line the base with parchment paper.
- Put the sugar and ¾ cup of pistachios into a food processor and blitz until the pistachios are finely ground, with a few nubbly bits, too.
- Add the remaining cake ingredients and blitz until everything is smoothly combined and the pears have been puréed into the batter. Remove the blade, scrape down the mixture, and use the spatula to help ease every bit of batter into the prepared pan.
- Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, though take a look at 35 minutes and if the cake looks like it's browning too fast, loosely cover with aluminum foil. When the cake's ready, it will be brown on top, beginning to come away at the edges, and a cake tester will come out with just a few damp crumbs sticking to it.
- Sit the cake on a wire rack and leave to cool completely in the pan; like all flourless cakes, it will sink a little. When the cake is completely cold, unclip, remove the base, and transfer to a cake stand or plate.
- Mix the preserves, lemon juice, and rosewater together in a cup, then brush this glaze over the surface of the cake, removing any small blobs of apricot if there are any. Scatter with finely chopped pistachios and strew with rose petals, then sprinkle a few more pistachio crumbs on the top.