What better time to celebrate one of the Columbian exchange’s – the transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World and the New – greatest gifts to the rest of the world.
After I have finished writing, I shall bake a chocolate cake.
And killing two birds with stone, so to speak, and mixing my metaphors, I shall hop on the latest bandwagon and introduce pistachios to the cake I have been baking for decades.
Passing through the late summer fairground on Hampstead Heath, I saw a stall offering Dubai-style chocolate-coated strawberries.
In Aldi, I came across Dubai-style chocolate syrup.
Indeed, I also saw small bars of Dubai-style chocolate there.
Naturally, in the interests of gastronomic research, I bought and tried it, as I did with several other versions, including M & S’s Big Daddy.
The latter tastes like a grown-up Mars Bar.
So, Dubai chocolate.
The story of its development has been all over the internet for months, and needs no repetition here.
However, the ingredients: chocolate, pistachios, crunch and caramel are very appealing and lend themselves to various combinations.
We have enjoyed my chocolate pots, over which I spread a crumbling of finely crushed cornflakes, spoon on some caramel, and then a topping of crushed pistachios.
The chocolate pots I make by melting a bar of 70% chocolate in 400 ml of vanilla custard, then pouring into small ramekins and chilling them.
This amount makes six or seven pots, which I then keep in the freezer.
Even better than cornflakes, and for something closer to Dubai-like authenticity, try crumbled shredded wheat fried in butter.
The same chocolate mixture spooned into pastry cases and topped with crushed pistachio makes an almost instant dessert.
I used ground pistachios in a light sponge flavoured with mandarin zest, and topped with a glaze of icing sugar mixed with mandarin juice.
Still in baking mode, I then adapted my favourite chocolate cake recipe to include these enhancing flavours and textures.
Pistachios are not cheap.
A recipe calling for 200 grams pistachios is already racking up a bill not much short of ten pounds.
It struck me, when buying the nuts, that they are a very similar colour to pumpkin seeds.
I wondered if…
You can perhaps guess the rest.
Now I use the pumpkin seed and pistachio mix wherever pistachios are required, ground together in equal proportions.
The pumpkin seeds tend to grind finer, adding a different texture.
You can give the pistachios an extra grind before adding the pumpkin seeds if you prefer more uniformity.
This mixture is excellent in stuffing, combined with sultanas, golden raisins, barberries or dried cranberries, chopped shallots and celery, and whatever are your chosen herbs and spices.
Best of all has been my discovery that the combination of pistachios and pumpkin seeds makes my kitchen’s best-ever pesto.
Chocolate, Caramel and Pistachio Cake
- 100 g 70% chocolate bar
- 125 ml strong black coffee
- 100 g salted butter, softened
- 150 g light muscovado or golden caster sugar
- Half a teaspoon pure vanilla essence
- 3 eggs, separated
- 200 g self-raising flour sifted with
- 25 g cocoa
- 125 ml plain yoghurt, sour cream or soured milk
Filling:
- 250 g dulce de leche
- 100 g salted butter, diced
Topping:
- 100 g 70% chocolate
- 200 ml double cream
- Crushed pistachios
Grease and flour a 20 cm diameter sponge tin.
Put the broken-up chocolate in a bowl over hot water, and add the coffee.
Leave until the chocolate has melted, and stir.
Put the rest of the ingredients, except the egg whites, in the food processor and process for 25 seconds, stopping and scraping down the sides with a spatula halfway through.
Add the chocolate mixture, and process for a couple of seconds more.
Whisk the egg whites until firm and snowy, and fold lightly into the cake mixture with a metal spoon, having first removed the bowl from the processor and taken out the blade.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, smooth the surface, and bake in the middle of a pre-heated oven at 180 C, gas mark 4 for about 45 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the middle emerges clean.
Allow the cake to cool in the tin for a few minutes then carefully ease out of the tin and turn it onto a wire rack.
When completely cool, split the cake in two.
The underneath of the cake becomes the smooth flat top surface for you to decorate.
The original top surface may have cracked in the baking, or risen to a point, in which case, take off a thin slice to enable the cake to balance evenly.
Make the filling by heating the dulce de leche in a heat-proof bowl, then beating in the butter.
Allow to cool, then refrigerate the mixture to firm it up.
Spread on one half of the cake, and place the flat-topped half on it.
Meanwhile, make the topping by melting the chocolate in the double cream, which you then beat as it cools, to thicken it.
Spread on top of the cake and scatter over it a generous layer of crushed pistachios.
Cook’s notes:
For a less rich cake, without the chocolate topping, glaze it with a little clear honey before scattering with pistachios, with or without fine flakes of chocolate, using a grater and chilled chocolate bar.
As an alternative to the dulce de leche and butter filling, there are many caramel preparations on the market.
I used dulce de leche simply because it had been languishing in my cupboard for months.
And I feel that any caramel needs butter, preferably unsalted.
