Recipes/Lemon pistachio snacking cake

Lemon pistachio snacking cake

A good snacking cake earns its place not through grandeur, but reliability. It sits patiently on the counter, improves with a day’s rest and can be sliced into at odd hours: with coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon or something stronger during a tense World Cup match. This lemon and pistachio version is especially companionable: tender, bright and just sharp enough to keep things lively

Prep

10 min

Cook

60 min

Total

70 min

Makes

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A traditional Bakewell tart consists of a pastry shell filled with jam and almond cream filling, finished with a layer of icing and a cherry on top. My version here replaces the jam layer with fresh plums for brightness and acidity. A little raising agent in the rich nutty filling lightens the crumb, while the layer of white icing has been replaced by a light dusting of icing sugar. Cut into bars, this is a hand-held, portable cake to take with you on a long drive, to a picnic or to pack into a lunchbox, but it’s equally good plated for dessert and served with cream.