Pistachio Pineapple Orange Cream Cake

This was one of my earlier posts, originally posted on 10/24/10, I did not have pictures then. Yesterday I baked this cake after very long time with some modification and now re-posting
the recipe with pics.
I had written down this recipe in my cook book long time ago, but I did not write down who gave me this recipe.

All I know that every time I bake this cake with little variation of flavors here and there, it comes out absolutely delicious, light and cool with nice blend of various flavors.

Ingredients:

For Cake:

1 box yellow or white cake mix (I used yellow)
One 15 oz of mandarin orange drained
3/4 cup of oil
4 eggs
1 package of 3.4 ox of instant Pistachio pudding mix
1/4 cup of unsalted chopped roasted pistachios

Ingredients for Icings:
8 oz cream cheese
2 cups milk (I used soya milk)
One 4 oz pack of Instant vanilla pudding mix
1 cup sour cream
2 limes1/4 cup sugar
1 small packet of unflavored gelatin
1/4 cup of water

•  One 8 oz tub of Cool whip
• 1/4 cup of chopped roasted pistachios
• 1 can of well drained crushed pineapple 
• 1 can of mandarin oranges drained 
• 1 teaspoon of ice cream essence or vanilla extract
• Extra cans of pinanpple chunks and mandarin for garnishing if desired. (this time I did not)
• 1/4 cup of roasted pistachios for garnishing if desired

 Method:

•  Preheat the oven at 350.
• Mix all the ingredients for cake.
•  Pour the batter in a greased 9 x 13 pan and bake the cake for 40 min. 
•   When the tooth pick comes out clean from the cake, take the cake out of oven and cool it completely.

While cake is baking prepare the two icing as follows:

•  Beat cream cheese, sour cream, milk and pudding mix together.

• Add juice from 2 limes, sugar, mix well.
• Add roasted chopped pistacios

• Mix gelatin (one small package from Knorr box) in 2 tables spoon of  cold water, than add 1/4 cup of boiling water, mix until gelatin is dissolved
• Add this to the icing.

• Regenerate it for 30 min while cake is cooling. 
• Now prepare the Cool whip topping  as follows:
• Whisk the Coolwhip with wooden spoon until fluffy.
•  Fold in the a can of drained crushed pineapple and drained mandarin orange in whisked Coolwhip.
• Add 1 teaspoon of ice cream essence of Vanilla
• Fold in everything until well incorporated.

• Spread the green cream cheese pudding icing  on cake (when cools down after baking)
•  Spread the Coolwhip with mandarin and pineapple over above pudding spread.
• Sprinkle  chopped roasted pistachio nuts
• You may garnish with  mandarin slices and pineapple rings or bits. (which I didn't this time)
• I also garnished with some left over crumbs of chocolate/almond cinnamon Biscotti that I had in my panty, you may omit this step
•  Refrigerate the cake for 4 hour before serving.

 

Suggestions:
You may omit the nuts if not desired.
You can use vanilla pudding mix instead of Pistachio pudding mix.



Recipe adapted and modified by Surekha from
an  Unknown  source
Photographs: by Surekha.

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Pistachio Golden Oreo Cake Pops

Suddenly I see cake pops everywhere, at wedding reception for party favors, at birthday parties, bridal showers, and baby showers.

I must admit, I was not a fan until I tried these at a wedding reception, they were without the Popsicle stick . These were decorated as groom's tux and bridal dress neckline covered with white and dark chocolate with not very sweet cake filling inside.  I fell in love !! So I decided to experiment and bake them myself.   Did a little research on history of cake pops and here is what I found on Wikipedia.

"A cake pop is a form of cake styled as a lollipop cake crumbs are mixed with icing or chocolate, and formed into small spheres or cubes in the same way as cake ball, before being given a coating of icing, chocolate or other decorations and attached to lollipop sticks. Cake pops can be a way of using up leftover cake or cake crumbs.
The "cake pop" increased in popularity between 2009 and 2011. A book called "Cake Pop" by Bakerella appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. In some countries, the Starbucks coffee chain sells cake pops in various flavors.

Cake pops use many of the ingredients used in baking a traditional  and can be made from cakes of any flavor. Many recipes found online use a cake mix instead of creating a cake batter from scratch. Either way, cake pops and cakes have their similarities.
Once the cake has been baked, or when leftovers from an existing cake have been collected, it is crumbled into pieces. These crumbs are mixed into a bowl of frosting or melted chocolate, and the resulting mixture is shaped into balls, cubes or other shapes.
Each ball is attached to a lollipop stick, and once the mixture solidifies, it can be decorated with frosting or melted chocolate and sprinkles. The cake balls can be frozen to speed the solidification process.
Most of the time making a cake pop is spent on shaping the cake into a desirable form and decorating it. Simple shapes such as spheres can be molded by hands, but complex shapes require tools. Silicone molding pan and cookie cutters are popular tools used in shaping cake pops."

So for Mother's day I decided to make my own with my favorite Pistachio pudding cake. I must admit they are rich and somewhat addictive, but if you have good will power, it may be  better to have one cake pop than having a big slice of icing loaded rich cake ;)

Here is how I made them:

Ingredients:

• 1 box yellow cake mix
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1 cup of sour cream
• 1 instant pistachio pudding mix
• 1/3 cup of vegetable oil or unsalted butter
• 3/4  cup of unsalted pistachio chopped (optional)
• 1 (8 oz) pack of cream cheese
• 1 pack of Golden Oreo cookies
• 3/4  pack of semisweet chocolate morsels
• 1 bar of Baker's semi sweet chocolate
•  50 lollipop sticks  (since I was not going to decorate them on stick, I used mini skewers just to help me dip the pops in melted chocolate.

Method: 

• Preheat the over at 325 degree F  for glass or dark pan as per instructions on cake mix box.
• Beat eggs, oil and water together.
• Add cake mix, sour cream and pistachio pudding mix.
• Mix everything with mixer and fold in the pistachio chopped nuts.
• Grease and flour the baking pan and pour cake batter in it.
• Bake it for 40 min.
• Once cake is baked, let it cool completely.

•  While the cake is baking you can grind the Oreo cookies  in food processor.
• Take out 1 cup of ground Oreos and keep it aside.
• Add softened cream cheese to the ground Oreo cookies.
• Mix the cream cheese in to Oreo crumbs until smooth paste is acquired.

• When baked cake is completely cool, break the cake with hands and crumble. Make sure there are no lumps or chunks of cake.
• Add the cream cheese and Oreo paste to this crumbled cake and mix gently with hands until well combined.
• Make 1.5"  size smooth ball  by rolling them between palms of your  hands.
• Insert a Popsicle stick or skewer in each ball.
• Freeze these balls for 30 min.

• Melt the Baker's chocolate and chocolate morsels in a narrow cup in microwave stirring in between until smooth.
• Dip each cake ball and swirl and coat with chocolate evenly. 
• Place them on parchment paper.
• Sprinkle the Golden Oreo cookies crumbs that you had set aside initially.
• Let the chocolate covered ball cool until the chocolate solidifies.

• Remove the stick and put them in paper cups or serve as desired.
•  If you wish to leave the Popsicle stick in you may, you may individually wrap them in decorative cellophane clear paper and put a curly ribbon around it.
• As you can see I removed the sticks and served them in a platter.
• You can get creative with decoration and serve them as desired.
• Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Variations:

• Instead of using yellow cake mix and pistachio pudding you may use chocolate devil food cake mix and instant chocolate pudding for cake.
• You can mix cream cheese with regular oreo and mix with the cake.
• Instead of using dark chocolate, you can use white chocolate for coating these chocolate Oreo cake pops.

This recipe yields 48-50 cake pops.
You can make these ahead of time and freeze them.

 

These are the cake pop from a wedding reception that inspired me to post this recipe. Aren't they cute with groom's tux and bridal gown neck line decoration  without the Popsicle stick ?
I prefer serving the cake pops this way in small cup cake foil/paper cups vs on Popsicle stick.

You can get creative with decoration.


 Cake pop information source: (text written in italic)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cake_pop
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License

Recipe and Photographs by Surekha.

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