Chocolate and pistachio cupcakes

 

I seem to always go through phases of buying massive amounts of nuts to snack on and getting tired of them quickly and the massive bag of pistachios I bought last month were no different. Hating to waste over 200g of shelled pistachios I resolved to put the in my cupboard and search the Internet for a delicious recipe involving them. A seemingly easy task, which led me no where.

Finished cakes.

I decided to make my own cupcake recipe and see how it turned out and to every one's surprise, except mine - they were made to my vision after all- they turned out pretty well. So I am now going to share my recipe with everyone else!

Makes 12 Cupcakes.

Ingredients:

200g Sugar

200g Margarine

200g Self raising flour

2 Eggs

200g Pistachios (which will need shelling -_- My poor fingers hated this part)

100g of milk or plain chocolate (on your preference)

Method:

Preheat your oven to 175C /350F /Gas Mark 4 (I Used the Internet for the Fahrenheit and Gas Mark conversions so you might want to double check!)

350 degrees F = 175 degrees C = Gas Mark 4

Cream the margarine and sugar together. Put most of the shelled pistachios into a blender, leaving 12-24 nuts whole for decoration.

Pistachio from the blender.

Authors Note: I tried to do this this with a hand blender attachment with my electric hand whisk and they went everywhere!Which shouldn't have come as a surprise!

Add the ground pistachios then sieve in the flour and the eggs a bit at a time, folding the mixture together till all the ingredients are combined.

Put the mixture into the cake cases and put into the oven for approx 25 mins.

Out of the oven.

Decoration:

Make a double boiler with a pan of hot water with a heat proof bowl over the top and melt your chocolate. Crush/chop your remaining pistachios to make smaller pieces. cover the top of the cakes with chocolate and sprinkle pistachio pieces over them, leave somewhere for the chocolate to set.

ENJOY!

xxVickyxx