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Pistachio Cake with Homemade Marzipan

The cake recipe is followed fairly closely, with two 9 inch pans. Roast 3/4 cup pistachios for 10 mins in a 350 oven. Once slightly cool, blend into a powder. Prepare two 9 inch cake pans. In a mixer, mix two sticks of butter,  12/3 cup sugar, until slightly lighter. Add 2 cups cake flour, 1/2 cup pistachio powder, 1tbsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt. Then add 5 eggs, followed by 1/2 cup milk mixed with 2 tsp vanilla (note the order of eggs is slightly different, but this method works fine). Bake in 350 oven until done (about 25 or so minutes), and cool. I used store bought apricot preserve. Also made chocolate ganache with about 1 lb semisweet chocolate chips, 11/4 heavy cream, and added a spoon of corn syrup. 

For the marzipan: In a clean mixer, add 11/2 cup fine almond flour (not meal), 11/2 cup confectioner's sugar, 1 tsp rose water,  11/2 tsp almond extract and 4-6 tbsp light corn syrup. The dough should barely be coming together. Knead by hand (it should be a tough dough...like Puri). Apply a bit of ghee to hand, and knead it well. Divide in two parts, and roll it thin using a large rolling pin. Using the base of the cake pan, trim the edges to get the two 9 inch marzipan rounds. Knead the trimmings for flowers. 

Assembly: Slice each cake into half. Cake first later, ganache, second later, apricot jam, marzipan, ganache, third layer, ganache, fourth later, apricot jam, marzipan and then cover the whole cake with ganache. 

For the roses: Split the marzipan into three sections and color them red/pink, yellow and green. For the roses, make the central bud with a base, and then make small balls and press in an outward direction with the palms to form petals. Attach the petals to form the rose shape. Roll the green one, and cut into leak shapes freehand using a knife. Use back of the knife to make veins. Arrange the flowers, leaves and any remaining pistachios/pistachio powder to decorate the cake.  

In the future, I want to try this once without chocolate. Just pistachios, apricot and marzipan. I think the flavors will stand out better in the absence of chocolate. We'll see. 

https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/06/pistachio-petit-four-cake/

https://www.daringgourmet.com/how-to-make-marzipan-almond-paste/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WFceymrPV4


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