A pistachio cake and a vintage dress

Hello,

While I was leafing through my cookery books to decide what to prepare for our Easter Sunday brunch, my middle daughter Magalie, who is a keen baker, made a pistachio loaf.  As the taste is absolutely divine and the cake is very pleasing to the eye, I thought I would share the recipe with you. It's from the book Cake Days, by the Hummingbird bakery.

As soon as the pistachio loaf was out of the oven, my spinach, feta and egg pie went in. Those of you who are on instagram, may have seen it already. The recipe was taken from a beautiful German garden book Geniessen im Garten, which was sent to me by Callway publishers.

I am giving away a copy of this book to one lucky winner. If you are interested, please have a look at next weeks blog post. I will show you the pie I baked as well.

The floral vintage dress on my photo's was one of three dresses I recently found in a lovely shop in Rotterdam, called 'Ruby Lee and the Vintage factory'. I you are looking for something special to wear, dating from the 1950's to the 1980s, for a reasonable price, this shop is worth a visit! A lovely excuse to visit my home town ;-).

Wishing you all a Happy Easter with family and friends and a good new week!

Love,

Madelief x

INGREDIENTS

190g unsalted butter

190g caster sugar

3 large eggs

190g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

25ml soured cream

1 tsp vanilla essence

100g shelled pistachio nuts, roughly chopped

120g icing sugar

40g ground pistachio nuts

METHOD

Preheat oven to 180C/160 Fan oven

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy

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Add the eggs one at a time

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Sieve together flour and baking powder and add to the mix in two stages.

Stir in the sour cream, vanilla and pistachios.

Transfer into a greased loaf tin and bake for about one hour

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Turn out and leave to cool while you whip up the icing

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Prepare the icing.

Add the chopped pistachios