It was my mom’s birthday this week. She’s obsessed with pistachio everything. So the logical cake to make was this one, found in The Hummingbird Bakery’s Cake Days book. It’s like a Madeira cake with additional pistachios. It’s heavy on the butter. In short, it’s amazing. Add it to your repertoire now!

Pistachio Loaf
Adapted from Cake Days
190g butter, unsalted, soft
190g caster sugar
3 eggs
splash of vanilla
190g flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
60ml buttermilk
100g pistachios, shelled and bashed

Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a loaf tin.
Cream the butter and sugar together until white and fluffy. Add in the eggs and vanilla. Then beat in the dry ingredients, followed by the buttermilk. Lastly, fold in the pistachios. The mixture is fairly stiff. Spoon it into the loaf tin and spread flat. Bake for an hour (I turned it halfway, my oven is like that.) Allow to cool in the tin before turning out onto a rack and cooling completely.

For the icing, mix 150g icing sugar with 2 tablespoons hot water. Add more icing sugar if the mixture is too runny. Spoon this over the cooled loaf and top with a few pistachios…