Pistachio Cake with Ganache Frosting

If you are around here long enough, you probably know that I have a serious crush with Ireland and that I love pretty much everything that comes from there. The good and the bad as well, no distinctions on that.
Indeed, one of my biggest frustrations is the fact that I'm not Irish. When I went to Ireland for the first (and pretty much only) time, it was so life changing that I still keep thinking that I was definitely born in the wrong country.
Thankfully it's almost Saint Patrick's Day, it apparently becomes socially acceptable to be what I pretty much am all year long.

Well, I don't wear orange wigs and huge green hats everyday, but the feeling is the same. For real. I get borderline annoying with that.

So, I imagine you guys wouldn't mind me sharing lots and lots of recipes here this week, right? Because seriously, I do get super excited -- specially because now it's pretty much my first ever Saint Paddy's that I can officially celebrate in like, ever.
People started celebrating it very -- like, VERY -- recently in Brazil (and Russia for that matter), and it's mostly an excuse to drink lots of beer and show up at work slightly hungover on the next day. Maybe it's the same around here, but I'd like to have the excuse not to drink, but to pretend I'm Irish without major judgments :)

This year I kinda imposed to myself green-themed baking with minimum amounts of green food coloring. Not that I'm against it, but well, it has to be a way to make yummy stuff without using truckloads of colorants. And it does!

Actually, this pistachio cake has no added colorants at all. I used, however, compound green chocolate for the decoration, but it's totally alright to not use it and have a pretty delicious and almost naturally (they probably use some sort of colorant in the pistachio paste… that's life!) green cake :)

This pistachio cake is an adaptation of a cake I used to make at school a good while ago. It's very flavorful and it pairs very well with the dark chocolate ganache. Originally it's soaked with a Kirsch-based syrup but if you allow me to be honest here, I wasn't particularly feeling into searching on every LCBO in my region for Kirsch. If you have some at home, just add a good tablespoon of it to about 100 ml of simple syrup and brush generously into each layer of cake. It will add a delicious and boozy flavor (which suits our celebration even better!) to this pistachio cake. If you're not into it, not a problem: just use it as is, but be sure to consume it within a day or so because otherwise it will be quite dry.

Happy St. Paddy's everyone!