Pistachio Cake

I believe I've mentioned this before, but in my family I let the birthday person tell me what he/she wants for their birthday cake.  My husband generally enjoys all the cakes I make.  Although I recently found out he wasn't a fan of the chocolate cake with peanut butter icing.  But not because the it didn't taste good, he doesn't care for peanut butter icing.  Each year he tries to go with something completely different.  This year, as you could guess from the title of the blog, he chose Pistachio Cake.

Let me back up.  My oldest daughter got me a cupcake cookbook for my birthday.  This is where he found the recipe for Pistachio cupcakes.  I didn't care for the icing that it called for so I created my own sour cream icing.  Didn't taste too bad.

All the dry ingredients, including cardamom - which is what is on top.

A nice bowl of shelled pistachios!

Chop the pistachios.

Mix into the batter

Pour into cake pans.  I used the 8" cake pans

Bake for appropriate amount of time.  This looks burnt or
 over done but that is due to the color of the batter.

Turn out onto a cooling rack.

Now I just want to say, this is NOT my typical cake.  Usually
I take the time to decorate it.  This was the sour cream icing.
After several trial and errors I came up with a good icing.
BUT I DIDN'T WRITE IT DOWN!!  

Added more of the pistachios on the outside to try to make it look....interesting?

Not bad.  Jeff liked it.  I believe my mother-in-law liked it as well.

I'm happy to make whatever cake you want, however, that doesn't mean I actually have to like the cake.  There are things I would change about the cake.  I'm not big on nuts in my baked goods.  I don't put nuts in brownies, or cookies.  There's just something about the texture that I really don't like.  Although, if I make baked goods that I don't like, then I won't eat them!!!