Sweet honey and pistachio cake
Don’t you just sometimes feel you’re at the mercy of some stranger when it comes to hosting of your blog? Not too long ago I moved from my Dutch hosting guys to Hostgator and while I have to say everything went smoothly up until this morning, I now felt why it makes sense to have a host a little closer to home. This morning I had a spike in CPU usage on my blog. It could be a hack attempt or whatever else can happen these days being online, but I was immediately locked out of all my accounts to prevent the server crashing. And I get that. Believe me, I understand why they decide to close down your site at that particular point.
What I do NOT understand is why it then has to take the entire day to get me back online. I was working on location so I could not get behind the computer to use the live chat (one of the disadvantages of hostgator for me I think) so it was 4 pm before I could do anything. And even then it took me about 2 hours in the chat to get it fixed. I had to reply to emails so I could ‘fix’ the issue (hard to fix something if you don’t know what’s causing it) plus had to almost beg to get it done. So… I am very annoyed at all this. I’m totally fine moving to another service and pay more if that is what it takes, but I just need to be able to rely on my host to not lock me out at the first sign of something going wrong. Or just lock down the offending site and not the entire account, as they did in this case. Locking down all my 6 websites…! It turns out that a plugin by the name of W3 total cache was causing the issue apparently, so that has been replaced… but still….
I know there are many of you out there who have huge amounts of traffic and high volume blogs, mine is peanuts in comparison, but how does your host handle traffic spikes and who is your host? Any hints, tips or whatever to help this being prevented? At this moment I am very tempted to move back to my previous host. I left because there was a huge price difference, but now I can see why there is one…
Sorry to be venting a little bit here but I just had to get this of my chest… And to sweeten the mood a little bit I have prepared this gorgeous and succulent cake for you. The recipe comes from the book Jamie Does. . .
where he lists this recipe in the Greece section. It’s delicious and pouring the honey syrup over the cake makes it moist and delicious. I’m sure you’re gonna love it too!
Sweet honey and pistachio cake
Ingredients
- 5 large eggs
- 225 ml greek yogurt
- 225 g caster sugar
- 75 g ground almonds
- 1 piece lemon zested
- 1 orange zested
- 150 g flour plus extra for dusting
- 200 g semolina
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 200 ml olive oil mild and creamy
serving
- 2 punnets strawberries hulled and roughly chopped
- greek yogurt
Topping
- 150 g pistachio shelled
- 150 ml honey good quality and runny
- Preheat the oven to 180 C. Mix all sponge ingredients together in a large bowl. Grease a cake tin of about 22 x 29 cm with a little olive, then dust with a sprinkling of flour and shake the tin about. Spoon in the sponge mixture from the bowl, scraping it all out and use a spatula to spread it evenly.
- Put the cake into the hot oven to bake for about 25 to 30 minutes, until golden and cooked through. To check, remove from the oven and stick a skewer into the center of the cake. If it comes out clean it's done, so put it to one side to cool for about half an hour.
- When you're just about ready to serve your cake, toast the, roughly chopped, pistachios in a dry pan over low to medium heat till they start to become golden brown and smell delicious. Add the honey to the pan and stir everything through. Squeeze the juice from both the orange and the lemon in the pan and then boil for 1 or 2 minutes until it becomes syrupy and thick.
- Stab the cake all over with a small knife to create little holes for the syrup to sink in to. then pour the pistachios and syrup all over the top and use the back of a spoon to spread it out evenly. It will look a bit runny but if you leave it for about 15 minutes the syrup will be soaked up.
- While still slightly warm, slice your cake and serve it with some chopped strawberries and greek yogurt on the side
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
Honey pistachio cake
Ingredients
- 5 large eggs
- 225 ml greek yogurt
- 225 g caster sugar
- 75 g ground almonds
- 1 piece lemon zested
- 1 orange zested
- 150 g flour plus extra for dusting
- 200 g semolina
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 200 ml olive oil mild and creamy
serving
- 2 punnets strawberries hulled and roughly chopped
- greek yogurt
Topping
- 150 g pistachio shelled
- 150 ml honey good quality and runny
- Preheat the oven to 180 C. Mix all sponge ingredients together in a large bowl. Grease a cake tin of about 22 x 29 cm with a little olive, then dust with a sprinkling of flour and shake the tin about. Spoon in the sponge mixture from the bowl, scraping it all out and use a spatula to spread it evenly.
- Put the cake into the hot oven to bake for about 25 to 30 minutes, until golden and cooked through. To check, remove from the oven and stick a skewer into the center of the cake. If it comes out clean it's done, so put it to one side to cool for about half an hour.
- When you're just about ready to serve your cake, toast the, roughly chopped, pistachios in a dry pan over low to medium heat till they start to become golden brown and smell delicious. Add the honey to the pan and stir everything through. Squeeze the juice from both the orange and the lemon in the pan and then boil for 1 or 2 minutes until it becomes syrupy and thick.
- Stab the cake all over with a small knife to create little holes for the syrup to sink in to. then pour the pistachios and syrup all over the top and use the back of a spoon to spread it out evenly. It will look a bit runny but if you leave it for about 15 minutes the syrup will be soaked up.
- While still slightly warm, slice your cake and serve it with some chopped strawberries and greek yogurt on the side
Disclaimer
The nutritional values above are calculated per portion. The details are based on standard nutritional tables and do not constitute a professional nutritional advice.
4 comments on “Sweet honey and pistachio cake”
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why do I have to print all the teenager drama just get the recipe printed.
O hahaha Kevin… 🙂 Well you could just copy and paste the recipe to print just that. I recently changed the layout and as a result the old print button doesn’t work anymore, but especially for you I have now moved this particular recipe to the new format. So you can skip the teenage drama… :))
Hi. What is semolina? Google does not provide me a good answer
I found this in google https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semolina Hope that helps!