Celebration Cake ?

I was recently asked to make the celebration cake for a family do. A dual Birthday and a Wedding Anniversary. In addition it needed to be able to cope with the 'does not like marzipan/royal icing/fruit cake/sponge cake requirements. An easy brief then added to by my insistence not to create 'the usual' style cake. The answer:

Blueberry and Pistachio Cake with Cardamom flavoured cream. I had seen a recipe online that seemed to fit the bill. Complicated in that it started with a whipped custard base but the idea seemed nice. A test bake proved not all that satisfying. The Cake was neither light nor moist so I decided to take the idea and modify the method.

Firstly, I took 8 egg yolks ( I needed a big cake so feel free to half the quantities), 500 g of caster sugar and 350 g of melted and cooled butter and mixed them together in the food processor. While they blended I whipped the 8 egg whites to soft peaks. I then folded the blended ingredients carefully into the egg whites. Finally I folded 170 g of ground unsalted pistachios and 150 g of fresh blueberries in before splitting it into 2 x 23 cm and 1 x 20 cm sandwich tins that I had lined with oiled baking parchment. Into a preheated oven at 180 C for 30 minutes (check with a skewer and let it cook a little longer if not cooked) .

I left the cakes to cool. Next I blended 200 g of unsalted butter with 400 ml of double cream, 400 g of icing sugar and the seeds from 12  cardamom pods, ground. The layers were sandwiched with this and the remainder put over the top before sprinkling with 400 g of blueberries and 190 g of roughly chopped pistachios.

An expensive cake, destructive to any diet but looked great and tasted even better.

I have listed the ingredients  for half the quantities below that should provide two 20 cm sandwich tin layers

4 eggs
250 g caster sugar
175 g of melted cooled butter
85 g of ground pistachio nuts
75 g of blueberries

for the decoration

100 g unsalted butter
200 ml of double cream
the ground seeds from 6 cardamom pods
85 g or roughly chopped pistachio nuts
75 g of blueberries