Pistachio Cake

Do you ever just have days, you almost wish, you hadn’t gotten out of bed?  A few weekends ago we were going to throw my father-in-law a retirement party.  My mom, bless her heart, volunteered to do our portion of the food, but a few years ago I took cake decorating classes and I actually like doing it.  Especially when there isn’t pressure/stress… but even then.

Normally I just grab a cake mix out of the cabinet, bake it off {I’m good at that} and away I run.  I never use store bought icing though.  Not since those classes.  But this particular day, I was so frustrated that hubby actually asked if I wanted to go to the store and just buy a cake.

I was less than thrilled with that idea, even though I was a bit of a grump.  I was a grump.  Sorry Family!

I had decided though that I was going to make a cake from scratch.  Boy did that blow up in my face.  About 7pm when I went to start putting the cake together, I read it called for Cake Flour.  Yes, I could make my own {since I didn’t have any} but I was tired and being lazy.  So I grumped off to the laundry room to get a cake mix.

Now all day long I had talked about making a Pistachio Cake but since he’d never had it he was worried he & everyone else wouldn’t care for it…

When it was all said and done, I made the Pistachio Cake.  btw, he liked it… just saying :).

Contrary to popular belief, the way I know how to make this cake does in fact use a cake mix… but I’m going to play around with it and ween myself from it :).  All from scratch baby, you just wait and see :).

Usually it’s supposed to have club soda. I didn’t have that so I subbed in Sprite. Sprite is sweeter so I’m not sure, but when push comes to shove, you don’t have, you improvise!

The secret ingredient.

You just dump it into the mixture… easy right 🙂

and the oil, can’t forget it!

and mix together.

Dump in the pan

And this is the moment your husband sticks his finger in, tastes the batter and says, I think maybe you shouldn’t scrape that all out :).

Pistachio Cake

• 1 Box Yellow Cake Mix
• 3 Large Eggs
• 1 cup Club Soda
• 2 small boxes pistachio instant pudding (one for the cake, one for the topping)
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/4 c finely chopped pistachio nuts or pecans (we didn’t have pistachio’s and I left out the pecans)
• 12 oz Cool Whip (I didn’t use the cool whip topping, I’ll share the icing story tomorrow)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a large bowl combine cake mix, eggs, club soda, 1 box of pudding, oil, and ½ cup nuts.  Mix well and Pour into a greased and floured cake or bundt pan.

Bake 40-50 mins.  Invert cake onto cooling rack and remove pan for cake to cool.  When cool place on serving plate.

To make icing mix carton of cool whip with remaining box of pudding.  Spread over cake and top with remaining nuts.