Light, soft and exceptionally moist vegan pistachio cake with a sticky sweet orange caramel syrup!

I’ve got to admit, every time I make something with a specific nut, that nut becomes my favourite of all nuts.  Case in point, this pistachio cake.  I’m too cheap to buy ready shelled pistachios so I don’t make many pistachio things because of the time involved in shelling those fiddly little buggers.  Though I did see one of those ‘life hacks’ on YouTube recently where you use the empty shells to prise open those particularly stubbornly closed shells.  LIFE.CHANGING.  No more broken fingernails.  No more swear words.  And no more throwing the offending stubborn pistachio back in the bag to wrestle with another day.

Where has this been all my life?!  Or did you all already know about this and kept it secret?

Why are nuts generally quite expensive?  Are they difficult to grow?  Fiddly to harvest?  I feel like I should know these things – especially given the amount of nuts we get through in our house.  So due to the expense and faffy nature of using pistachios I don’t tend to use them as often as I’d like.

But when I do .. boy oh boy.  NEW FAVOURITE NUT right there.

We’ve got pistachios in a few ways in this vegan cake recipe.

Both whizzed up raw nuts and Foodie Flavours pistachio essence in the batter and roughly chopped in the sticky sweet caramel syrup that’s drizzled and splodged all over the top of this vegan cake.

Don’t be put off by the use of the word caramel.  It’s no more complicated than using the wonderful thing that is Sweet Freedom’s new Caramel Syrup.  Straight from the bottle this smells like fairground toffee.  That heady sticky sweet smell of toffee apples and candy floss.  I was (literally) born in a town centre (above Mum and Dad’s shop) that had a travelling fairground visit every October for 2 weeks.  THIS caramel syrup is the smell of my childhood and I’ll admit I stood there sniffing the bottle for probably far too long.

Sweet Freedom have released a couple of new flavours recently – the other being Vanilla Syrup.  This smells like Christmas, Easter and school holidays all rolled into one!  And is perfect in this truly divine Vegan French Toast!

Love pistachios as much as we do?  Try these Caramel Chocolate Protein Bites or how about these Pistachio and White Chocolate Shortbread cookies!  Both vegan, both sweet and both guaranteed to make you oooh out loud 😉

As will this pistachio cake!  It is SO light and moist – even before the caramel drizzle!

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