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Orange Pistachio Gugelhupf Cake

Sliced Gugelhopf cake with sugar icing
This recipe is my variation of how we bake Gugelhupf Cakes in Slovakia from scratch - a modification of my mom's recipe.
Prep Time 40 minutes
Bake Time at 355°F 45 minutes
Course Dessert
Cuisine Central Europian, Slovak
Servings 15

Equipment

  • Gugelhopf or Bundt cake pan
  • 2 medium-large bowls
  • 1 medium bowl -- it is handy when sifting the powdered sugar or flour
  • 1 medium bowl for the glaze (optional)
  • Hand mixer
  • Fine mesh strainer
  • Whisk

Ingredients
  

Dry Ingredients

  • 8 oz All-purpose flour
  • 8 oz Powdered white sugar
  • 1 packaging Dr. Oetker vanilla sugar available in Walmart, available in Walmart
  • 3 tsp Baking powder
  • 1-2 cups Cocoa powder
  • 1 cup Unsalted pistachios, chopped

Wet Ingredients

  • 5 Eggs, Room temperature eggs work charms.
  • ½ cup Sunflower oil, If you are allergic or you don't want to use sunflower oil, use one that is flavorless and is suitable for baking.
  • ½ cup Whole milk
  • ¼ cup Limoncello, Italian lemon liqueur
  • 1 Organic orange, juiced, From my experience, the organic oranges are sweeter and more flavorful than the regular ones.
  • 1 stick Unsalted butter

Sugar Glaze

  • cup Powdered sugar
  • 1 tsp Unsalted melted butter
  • 1 tsp Vanilla extract
  • 2 tbsp Whole milk

Instructions

The Batter

  • Preheat the oven to 355°F.
  • Divide the egg whites and yolks into separate bowls.
  • Add a pinch of salt into egg whites and beat them with the hand mixer until they form structures. Set aside.
  • Mix the powdered sugar and vanilla sugar in a medium bowl.
  • Sift the powdered and vanilla sugar mixture into the egg yolks and combine them together with the hand mixer until they form a sweet-tasting uniform liquid.
  • Pour ¼ cup of Limoncello into a glass, add fresh juice from one orange and stir them together.
    Limoncello - Cake Ingredient
  • Add ½ cup of milk and the Limoncello-orange juice mixture to the egg and sugar blend and combine them with the hand mixer.
  • In the same medium bowl, you mixed the sugars, combine 8 oz all-purpose flour and 3 teaspoons of baking powder.
  • Sift the flour&baking powder mixture into the yolks in parts, use the hand mixer to blend it. Do not add another part of the flour mixture until it is not blended with yolks, otherwise you will get clumps. Also after each part of the flour mixture, pour a bit of the ½ cup of sunflower oil.
  • Add the beaten egg whites in parts into the mixture, combine with a spatula.
  • Combine in 1 cup of chopped unsalted pistachios.
  • Divide the batter in ⅔ and ⅓ ratio into separate bowls (you can use the bowl, in which you had the egg whites).
  • Sift cocoa powder into the bowl with the smaller amount of dough and mix with the spatula.

Before Baking

  • Coat the bundt cake pan with the unsalted butter, make sure to cover every inch, or the batter will stick to the pan.
    Greased bundt cake pan
  • Sift some flour into the pan, so it sticks to the butter everywhere, then discard the remains of flour that didn't stick.
  • Pour the white dough into the pan first, then the cocoa one on top of it. Grab a spatula and with its other side mix the two doughs very very lightly to create some patterns.
    Gugelhopf cake batter in the cake pan
  • Cover the pan with aluminum foil and put it in the oven. Uncover after 35-37 mins. Don't remove the cake from the oven.
  • After the cake is baked, shut the oven off. Very slowly start to open the oven door, inch after inch every three minutes. If the cake will experience a temperature shock, it will get flat.
    Gugelhopf cake in the oven
  • When the cake has cooled down a bit, remove it from the oven, and turn the pan upside down. The cake should come out from the pan easily.

The Sugar Glaze

  • Add 1 ½ cup of powdered sugar into the bowl.
  • Add 1 teaspoon of melted butter and vanilla extract.
  • Pour the milk into the bowl in parts while whisking. When all ingredients are combined, the glaze is ready to be poured over the Gugelhupf cake.

Notes

  • For coating the pan with grease you can use butter, but also the pork grease as it can withstand high temperatures neither browns after a while. You don't have to be afraid that your cake would have a pork flavor, high quality pork grease is flavorless. You can also use non stick baking spray, but my philosophy in cooking and baking is to stay away from too much chemicals, artificial flavors, colorants, etc.
  • I prefer using a cake pan made of glass for Gugelhupfs. Each time I baked Gugelhopf in steel or cast aluminum pans, the cake was quite dry for my taste.