Pistachio Apricot Cake

Trying whipped caramel frosting! AKA an excuse to make another cake. # 340: Pistachio Apricot Cake

It’s always nice when my baking brain focuses on a complete dessert with an established recipe, but frequently it’s just a single element. The filling or dough idea will bounce around aimlessly in my head until I come up some way to showcase it in a bake.

In this case, there were two elements imitating the bouncing DVD screensaver: pistachio butter cake and whipped caramel frosting. At some point a lightbulb went off and I decided to combine them!

This frosting is supposed to be just caramel, but in an alternate universe where it’s fluffy. Lightened with a host of tiny bubbles until it passes over the texture line from a rich filling to a spreadable frosting.

While it sounds like a nice idea, the resulting frosting was SO sweet, I blindly grabbed for the heavy cream to dilute it. Unsweetened whipped cream came to the rescue, even reinforcing the structure a bit with a second army of air bubbles.

Fun fact, all the pistachio cake recipes I found involved almond extract in addition to ground pistachios. Almonds always be sneaking into desserts uninvited! I wonder if they’re just a strong baseline nut flavor that carries well through enriched batters. Or are almonds just delicious and we can’t resist adding them wherever possible? Definitely both.

I opted to skip the green food coloring suggested in most recipes, and let the pistachios really lean into their love of camo.

Freckled bbs.

The filling was a game time switch from strawberry to apricot, once it truly hit me how sweet caramel frosting is. Apricots are tart enough to help balance the caramel sugar rush while not stealing the flavor show.

Because it was a last minute decision, these were a freezer find: dried apricots soaked in orange juice, and then frozen when I realized there’s only so many you can eat in a week before you need a break.