Pistachio seems to be getting a lot of attention recently, I’ve been seeing so many different pistachio flavoured desserts. I love pistachios but the only dessert I’ve ever had them in is baklava so I wanted to try something different.
I added a raspberry icing on top of these, honestly mainly just for the aesthetic. I felt like pink and green would look good together but the taste ended up amazing. Turns out pistachio and raspberry is a great combination!
The icing:
I ended up making a raspberry flavoured cream cheese style icing for this. I don’t really know what to call. But basically, I made a cream cheese icing but without icing sugar. I feel like icing sugar can make icings taste gritty sometimes.
I recently found out about condensed milk buttercream. Which is essentially just a buttercream that replaces the sugar with condensed milk instead, so this is what I did here.
Can I replace the freeze dried raspberry powder?
To make the icing raspberry flavoured, I added freeze dried raspberry powder. Personally, I think using freeze dried fruit powders are the best way to add flavour to icings. I get mine from Amazon, from a brand called ‘Honeyberry’.
If you want to use something else, I would just add some raspberry jam into the icing instead.
I don’t recommend just adding crushed raspberries. Cream cheese icing is quite soft so you don’t really want to add more liquid to it!
Pistachio and Raspberry Cupcakes
Ingredients
Makes: 14
- For the cupcakes:
125g softened unsalted butter
(margarine works too)125ml vegetable oil
250g granulated sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 eggs
250g self-raising flour
60ml milk
150g crushed pistachios
Some green food colouring (optional)
- For the icing:
300g unsalted butter (at room temperature)
375g condensed milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
225g cream cheese (at room temperature)
3 tablespoons freeze dried raspberry powder
Directions
- Making the cupcakes:
- Start by pre-heating your oven to 180c/350f and also add your cupcake cases into your tins.
- Add the butter, oil, sugar and vanilla into a large bowl. Beat these together on medium-high speed for 5 minutes. If you are doing this by hand, just whisk this for as long as you can, it is ok if you don't do the full 5 minutes.
- Add in 2 of the eggs, mix these in then mix in the remaining 2 eggs.
- Mix in the flour and milk just until you get a smooth batter, then fold in the crushed pistachios. If you want to add some food colouring, add it in at this point too.
- Fill your cupcake cases 3/4 of the way full with this batter, then bake them for around 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of them comes out clean.
- Leave these to cool completely.
- Making the icing:
- Add the butter into a bowl and beat this for about a minute. You should see it lighten in colour.
- Add in the condensed milk in 3 parts, mixing in between each part
- Now add the vanilla and cream cheese. Just mix this until the mixture is smooth, you don't want to whip this for too long.
- Finally, mix in the raspberry powder
- Pipe this onto the cooled cupcakes using a large star tip and decorate however you want. I just sprinkled some more crushed pistachios on top. Enjoy!
Video Tutorial
@ashbaber pistachio and raspberry cupcakes 😩
♬ Soul Food - Ruck P
