What became “The Year of the Cake” started innocently enough. In October 2023, Sandi Pierantozzi and her husband, Neil Patterson, ordered a slice of pistachio torte from a bakery in Sicily. It was love at first bite. The couple returned to the shop each of the five days they spent in Taormina, always savoring the torte and other freshly-baked pastries featuring pistachios harvested from the shop owner’s family farm. Pierantozzi set herself the challenge of replicating that beautiful, nut-studded, not-too-sweet cake back home in their Fairmount kitchen.
Baking was not entirely new to Pierantozzi. Growing up in Roxborough, she had baked bread and focaccia with her mother. She remembers that her mom always had a homemade cake on hand, housed on a glass cake stand protected from snacking children by a metal dome. But cake baking was not Pierantozzi’s thing. She has perfected countless variations of biscotti, Christmas pizzelles and an annual carrot cake for her husband’s birthday. Making 2024 “The Year of the Cake” has sent her on an exciting new baking adventure.
Thirty-eight cakes into her challenge, Pierantozzi happily recalls some of what cake baking has taught her. You don’t need a lot of fancy equipment. She did buy various baking pans, but the electric mixer she purchased she later returned. “I’d rather cream the butter and sugar by hand,” she says. Once you understand the basic chemistry of baking, you don’t have to follow a recipe religiously. After trying assorted pistachio torte recipes she just kept “upping the amount of pistachios” until her husband announced that her torte was better than the original. Making a yearlong project out of cake baking proved to be wholly engaging. “I liked the continuity of working on figuring it out,” Pierantozzi says. “Taking notes, experimenting and enjoying the process.”
As a ceramic artist, Pierantozzi recognizes some similarities between making pottery and baking. “When I make pottery I’m there in all the tenses: everything I learned in the past is there, I’m very aware of what I’m doing in the moment, and I’m thinking about what I might change in the future.” Cake baking offers the same rewards, except you can eat the result.
The baker’s most surprising discovery, though, was how much people love being given cake. Despite a steady supply of cake at home, Pierantozzi maintained her trim physique. The secret was keeping only a few slices and gifting the rest to neighbors, friends and anyone who looked like they could use some cheering up.
Pierantozzi became something of a cake evangelist even before a friend gave her Rose Levy Beranbaum’s cookbook, “The Cake Bible.” Feeling down? “Make a cake and give it away,” she says. “It’s even more enjoyable than eating it yourself.” And if scratch baking seems daunting, she suggests starting with a box of cake mix. “The world needs all the sweetness it can get right now,” Pierantozzi says. And a cake — no matter how simple — will bring joy.
Pistachio Torte
by Sandi Pierantozzi
2 cups shelled pistachio nuts (I use roasted and salted pistachios, but you can use raw.)
4 ounces (1 stick) soft, unsalted butter
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons white sugar
4 eggs
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Put a circle of baking parchment on the bottom of the pan. Butter and flour the pan.
- Grind shelled pistachio nuts in a food processor as fine as you can without making butter. Save a couple of tablespoons for decoration.
- Cream butter and sugar together into a large bowl. Whisk until creamy.
- Add ground pistachio nuts and mix well.
- Separate eggs — make sure your hands are clean!
- Mix yolks with pistachio mixture.
- Beat egg whites until stiff.
- Add the egg whites to the pistachio mix, a little at a time, folding gently with a spatula until well blended.
- Pour batter into the prepared pan. Do not smooth over; doing so will release air from the egg whites. Tip pan gently to cover bottom.
- Bake for 40 to 50 minutes in the center of the oven until the torte has risen and is slightly golden.
- Use a skewer to test. The skewer should come out clean when the torte is done.
- Cool cake in pan and then release.
- To decorate, sprinkle the reserved pistachio nuts over the torte. (I usually spread a thin layer of Pistacchiosa — a sweet, creamy pistachio paste from Italy — and then decorate with shaved or chopped chocolate and the ground pistachio nuts.)
