Something interesting happened that led me to make
this cake. If you google chocolate coffee cake, or look it up in food blog search (my favorite), you hardly find any. I found one after searching a lot.

All
coffee cakes have chocolate as an addition, usually in the filling, as chips or
a ripple, but there are none with a dark chocolate batter. So this chocolate
pistachio coffee cake was born.

This is a coffee cake, simple in spite of the
excentric pistachios, with sour cream in the batter, a crumble on top and
perfect with an infusion. Are you a tea or a coffee person? It is a tea cake
too, don´t worry.

The winter has its ups and downs in this city of Buenos Aires, but even on sunny, blue sky days, darkness comes too soon, and
my feelings are of doing as little as I need to outside.

The kitchen and heated
comfort of my house rule my days. A chocolate cake was badly needed. It´s still
the most comforting way to kill a few hours while doing something I love, baking
a cake with chocolate.

There´s not much to say about this recipe, except that
I went to the tried and true book about traditional and old fashioned cakes. I
changed the recipe a bit and out of the oven came a bubbling cake, deeply
colored from the very dark sugar I used. It looked almost burned though it
wasn´t.

Not that anyone complained. But it wasn´t the most appealing. I suggest
light brown sugar next time for the topping. It will be good for the pistachios
too, they will shine brighter.

I was supposed to post for the French Fridays with Dorie group today, but I really don´t know what happened.

I´ve missed the last
three recipes, including a cherry clafoutis, so it´s not a minor situation
going on here.

It can be summed up by saying there was too much work, a new
temporary one included, and the most inconvenient, annoying and inevitable
moment of the year, taxes!

Chocolate Pistachio Coffee Cake

Yield: 8 servings 1x

Scale

Ingredients

For the topping:

1 Tbs flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¾ cup 150g firmly packed light brown sugar
2 Tbs 30g unsalted butter
1 cup 100g pistachios, shelled and coarsely chopped

For the cake:

1 ¾ cups 245g all purpose or cake flour
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
4 oz 115g unsalted butter
½ cup sugar
½ cup dark brown sugar
3 eggs
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream
½ cup semisweet chocolate chips

Instructions

For the topping:

In a bowl mix dry ingredients, add butter in pieces and mix with your fingers until clumpy.
Add pistachios, mixing lightly. Reserve.

For the cake:

Preheat the oven to 350ºF / 180ºC. Butter and dust with cocoa or flour a 13×9 inch (22x33cm) springform cake pan.
Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder and soda and salt together in a bowl. Reserve.
In a large bowl, beat butter until creamy. Add both sugars gradually while beating, until you have a light and creamy mixture, about 3 minutes.
Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add vanilla.
Beginning and ending with the dry ingredients, add them dry in three additions, alternating with the sour cream in two additions. Don’t overbeat at this point or the cake will be tough.
Add chocolate chips. Pour into the prepared cake pan and sprinkle the topping on top.
Bake for 30 minutes, or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean.
Let cool on wire rack, unmold, sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve.
It keeps, wrapped, for a few days.

adapted from Cakes, by Maida Heatter

Today’s 4 related recipes worth looking at:

Pistachio Crusted Halibut with Blood Orange Sauce from Jans Sushi Bar

Pistachio Gelato from David Lebovitz

Dark Chocolate, Pistachio and Smoked Salt Cookies from Joy the Baker

Cocoa Nib Coffee Cake from Not Without Salt

Paula Montenegro

A baker for more than 30 years, I love testing recipes and sharing the best of what I find. I'm mostly self-taught with some time spent in baking school. I believe we can all be bakers and cooks with the right instructions and simple ingredients. If you're craving easy recipes with amazing results, you're in the right place. Let's get into the kitchen!

Comments

Melanie @ Just Some Salt and Pepper says
August 22, 2013 at 02:44
I had no clue food blog search existed! Also, I'm on a pistachio dessert kick and this sounds wonderful!
anna @ annamayeveryday says
August 4, 2013 at 08:39
Love chocolate, love pistachios and coffee – what a cake!
mividaenundulce says
August 3, 2013 at 13:28
Looks delicious, and the best thing s that I can stop searching in the web for a recipe like this.
Dana @ Simply Romanesco says
August 2, 2013 at 15:48
This cake looks so rich and decadent! Total perfection, and I love the pistachios in there; I usually use walnuts, but the pistachios look so pretty and I bet they work beautifully with chocolate 🙂
laurasmess.me says
July 30, 2013 at 23:14
What a beautiful cake Paula… I love the dark, dark chocolatey sugar topping. You're right, it perfectly shows off the beautiful pistachios. I hope that you're plowing through the tax stuff and the other accumulated work. Argh, what a frustrating time of year. Thanks for this lovely recipe, I definitely need to try it soon! xx
Abbe@This is How I Cook says
July 29, 2013 at 21:44
Taxes? I'm glad you had this cake to help you through! And It looks like a great one!
Nancy @ gottagetbaked says
July 29, 2013 at 16:56
Oh Paula – this cake is a stunner! What a delicious flavour combination. I would love to bake this and have it lying around my apartment for whenever I need a bite of cake (which is pretty often, so this cake wouldn't last long!). And thank you thank you thank you for introducing me to the food blog search. It's way better than google at bringing up recipes from only food bloggers.
Karen @ Lemon Grove Cake Diaries says
July 29, 2013 at 07:52
What a great idea to use pistachios, what could be better than pistachios and chocolate a winning combination in my eyes!

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Chocolate Pistachio Coffee Cake