Fresh plum, raspberry and pistachio cake

I recently visited my like-named friend in Cambridge for a much enjoyed catch-up. Aside from our Christian name, we share other things in common: the same undergrad. degree, beautiful singing voices (ehem) and a love of freshly baked cakes. We decided to make a cake that neither of us had ever tried... and browsing on bbcrecipes the recipe we plumped for was the very hairy bikers fruity pistachio cake. It seems to include many addition ingredients to your average spongy cake, but because it used the all-in-one mixing technique it really doesn’t take that long to make. The subtle lemon and pistachio flavours compliment the fresh fruit simply beautifully.

To start with you’re going to need:

• 50g shelled pistachios
• 175g dairy-free spread (we used pure sunflower)
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 175g self-raising flour
• 1 lemon, zest and juice
• 400g fresh plums, stones removed, flesh cut into quarters
• 400g fresh raspberries
• icing sugar, to dust
• soya cream to serve

Time to bake:

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line cake tin (ours was a 9inch which worked pretty well)

2. Roughly chop the pistachios




3. Whisk together spread, sugar, eggs, flour, lemon zest and juice. (By putting the flour in the bowl first you’ll reduce the chances of it billowing up and all over your work top and face... not that my work surface ever gets too messy... hmm




4. Stir pistachios into mix


5. Spoon half the cake batter into the tin, scatter half the plums and half the raspberries on top of the batter then top with the remaining cake mixture followed by the remaining plums and raspberries (you may want to keep a few pieces of plums and a few of the raspberries back for decorating).




4. Bake in the oven for about 50 minutes, or until golden-brown and the cakes springs back when pressed lightly.

5. Allow to cool for 5 minutes in the tin and then gently transfer to a wire rack.




6. Sprinkle the top of the cake with icing sugar




7. Garnish with fruit and serve with soya cream. I also added some roughly chopped dark pistachio chocolate. Yum! I think this cake would also work well warm... an excellent dinner-party desert. Either way, it's best eaten fresh.