Birthday Cake Club: Pistachio Raspberry

With a blushing pink, spiced hibiscus buttercream.

Bakers Notes:

Insanely fluffy crumb; thick and tangy raspberry filling

Hibiscus, cinnamon, clove, and lemon in a blissful buttercream

Hi Bakers!

Consider this your sign to be the official birthday cake baker of your family and friends group. This is where we flex our baking skills and engage our creative muscles to make an epic birthday cake to remember. For May, it’s with this stunning Pistachio Raspberry Cake - gorgeous from the inside and out. 

Making birthday cakes is such a simple yet impactful tradition to start. It could be for your friends or spouse. It might look like an annual ritual where you let your children pick a cake to make together. Or it could be starting a lifetime of memories with your baby’s first birthday cake and beyond. 

Nobody is looking back and thinking “Did I make too many birthday cakes?” Instead, these milestones are marked with love and celebration. The cakes can be as simple as a confetti snack cake or as epic as this pistachio one, but the adoration you feel when someone cooks or bakes just for you is everlasting.

This pistachio cake is impossibly soft and fluffy. Made with olive oil and ground pistachios you’d think it might be dense or oily, but it’s the opposite. It’s the small amount of sour cream that really keeps it tender.

So much more than a smear of raspberry jam like many other layer cakes, the filling is thick and tangy. I cooked down frozen raspberries with a little sugar and lemon juice. A slurry of cornstarch and water helps thicken it up so that it stays put between the layers of cake.

Now this frosting! It’s silky, subtle, and slightly spiced. It gets its pink hue from hibiscus tea. 

Juicy, sweet, tart, and tangy - the taste of hibiscus is often described as a cross between cranberry and pomegranate. I find it slightly earthy, which makes pairing it with a pinch of both cinnamon and cloves even more delightful. 

The frosting is Swiss meringue buttercream. It is supremely smooth and not overly sweet. Hibiscus syrup and fresh lemon juice add a subtle flavor that pairs well with the nutty pistachio and tangy raspberry filling.