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Spring has arrived in San Francisco. It is blue skies, blooming cherry blossoms, and sun-basking cafe patrons as far as the eye can see. A couple of the neighborhood cats have found a warm spot on our back patio, and it is clear they have no intent on moving anytime soon. Yesterday I was even able to dust off the BBQ for the first time in months, and grill up a quick lunch.

Back in an unusually stormy December, I earmarked one of Clotilde's recipes for our next stretch of sunshine. She posted a recipe for her Chocolate + Pistachio Surprise Cake (It sounds much more cool and sophisticated if you say it in French) - Gateau Surprise Chocolat Pistache. Her picture showed a rustic, moist, swirling delicacy of dense chocolate and pistachio cake. It looked delicious, and more importantly, it didn't appear prissy and fragile. This is the kind of cake that looks like it could hold up on a bumpy car ride, or inside the perilous walls of a picnic basket or lunch pail. I immediately thought, hey, this could be the perfect picnic cake. And indeed, it did not disappoint.

The taste? Decadent without being too sweet. I left off the ganache frosting for this picnic version, but would slather the cake with a good layer if I were going to serve it at night. I also baked it in loaf shapes - for easy slicing straight from the pan. An option for the addition of ganache on-the-go would be to pack a small tub of it into your picnic basket, and use it as a spread on your cake slices. Yum.

Gateau Surprise Chocolat Pistache Recipe

270 g (2 C) flour
2 tsp baking powder (1 envelope)
1 tsp baking soda
150 g (2/3 C) butter, at room temperature
300 g (1 1/4 C) white sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 C (3 x 125 ml) plain yogurt or sour cream
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
60 g (1/3 C) chocolate chips
2 Tbsp pistachio paste
60 g (1/3 C) shelled pistachios, chopped

Ganache:
-120 g (3 oz) baking dark chocolate
-125 ml (1/2 C) whipping cream

Preheat your oven to 180�C (360�F). Grease a 25-cm (10-inch) cake pan, preferably nonstick with a removable bottom.

Prepare the chocolate batter. In a food processor, mix together half of the sugar and half of the butter until fluffy. Add in two of the eggs, one at a time, mixing between each. Add in half of the yogurts and all the vanilla extract, mix again. In a medium bowl, combine half of the flour with half of the baking powder, half of the baking soda and all of the cocoa mixture. Add the flour mixture into the food processor and mix again until just combined. Pour the batter into the cake pan, and reserve in the refrigerator.

Rince the bowl of the food processor, and prepare the pistachio batter: mix together the rest of the sugar, the rest of the butter and the pistachio paste. Add in the two last eggs, one at a time, mixing between each. Add in the rest of the yogurts and mix again. In a medium bowl, combine the rest of the flour with the rest of the baking powder and baking soda, and all of the chopped pistachios. Add into the food processor and mix again until just combined.

Take the cake pan out of the fridge, and sprinkle the chocolate chips evenly over the surface of the chocolate batter. Gently pour the pistachio batter on top, and smooth out the surface with a spatula. Put into the oven to bake for about an hour or until a cake tester comes out clean. Let rest for five minutes on the counter, then turn out on a rack to cool completely.

Prepare the ganache. Melt the dark chocolate with the whipping cream in a double boiler (or in a bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water), stirring with a spoon regularly until completely melted and velvety. Let the ganache rest until it has thickened a bit, about 30 minutes, and frost the cake using a small spoon.

You can either wait until the ganache has cooled and set before serving, or frost the cake just before you serve it, but the cake itself needs to have cooled down completely, it tastes better that way.

hs notes: next time I am going to stir in a handful (or two) of chocolate chips into the chocolate batter just before pouring it into the pan. I'm also going to give the batters a little swirl with a skewer or knife, before placing in the oven, to get a pretty ripple going (more like Clotildes accidental swirl. I'm also going to undercook the cake just a shade...I prob. overcooked these cakes by 5 or 10 minutes, to get more of a moist texture. Forty minutes for the big loaf was too long.

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