5 Minute Pistachio Cream

Looking for Pistachio Cream that really tastes like pistachio, yet is homemade, takes only 5 minutes, needs no food processor * or blender and is cheaper than the shop bought version?
I have tried the shop bought original and 4 different homemade versions for you, to give you the best one and arrived at Pistachio Butter with white chocolate. If you want to know how and why, keep reading.
And of course you can use it to make your own version of Dubai Chocolate!

 

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• Why You Will Love This
• The Ingredients
• The Process
• How To Store
• FAQ

Why You Will Love This 

What is Pistachio Cream?

Pistachio Cream is a sweet spread made from sugar, pistachios, white chocolate and, in some recipes, also milk and butter. The original version called “Cream Di Pistachio” comes from Sicily in Italy. It’s essentially like Nutella but made with pistachios. You can use it in the same way on toast, pancakes, oatmeal, waffles, cakes, donut filling and, of course, for the viral Dubai Chocolate!
The most popular jarred version is from Pisti. And while you get it in Italy for about 13€, the costs within Europe and the US easily double due to shipping and the current demand.

If you can find it. Back in time I used to get it in an Italian shop, but these days, after Dubai Chocolate went Viral, not a chance!

Use it to make your own Dubai Chocolate

Dubai Chocolate is everywhere! I mean seriously taken over the internet everywhere. Deservedly so, after the inventor Sarah Hamouda made it go viral. She since moved on to create several other creative flavors of chocolate, that I would love to try but just could not find it in Ireland.
And I really wanted to try making it myself. So I went to find the Italian Pistachio paste online (I knew there is no hope in shops around here for sure), yet it was sold out everywhere! Same with any other brands.

Bummer, I thought. But hey, I can make my own I’m sure!

I tried 5 versions, starting with the original Sicilian recipe, then rethinking the composition.

Turns out my homemade Pistachio Cream is perfectly suited for said chocolate, as it contains less water than original Sicilian recipes, which have milk in them, softening the crispy fried Kunafa/Knafeh. Which, needless to say, is rather counterproductive.

Just 2 Ingredients

After testing lots of versions, my favourite Pistachio Cream is made from just 2 ingredients: Pistachios and white chocolate. And your Microwave. No blender, no food processor *. If you want to know how I tested and what I used exactly, read on.

Takes 5 Minutes

As mentioned before, this paste takes just 5 minutes to make. One of the reasons I’m posting it this week, as I’m currently taking a food video course, to give you better videos to watch, but didn’t want to leave you without a post!
At least that was what I thought. And then this turned into a marathon of making, trying and taking photos. Hence a little late. But I really hope worth it!

And we will be using this in multiple upcoming recipes. So it’s handy to have around.

I figured I’ll let you order your pistachio butter and play with this one for a bit, before I show you what I’ve been creating using this magical ingredient.

Spoiler alert: While I made the Dubai Chocolate Bark from Broma Bakery , that’s not on my recipe list. I feel there are plenty out there explaining how to make your own and there are only so many ways you can make it.

What to use this for?

So what can you use this delicious, creamy, dreamy pistachio paste for?
Turns out: A million things!
I’ll give you a few recipes for it in the next weeks, but for now:

• Try it on toast, it’s a revelation!
• Fill Croissants or Donuts with it.
• Bake a cake and fill it with this dreamy cream mixed with Mascarpone. It’s a game changer!
• Drizzle over pancakes for the most luxurious breakfast treat.
• Stir into oatmeal or yoghurt.
• Or just eat it by the spoonful. I won’t judge. I’ve certainly done it myself!
• Or of course, make your own Dubai Chocolate. It really is worth trying!

You can customize the recipe

With a few minor changes you can completely customize your homemade pistachio cream. Add a hint of salt to bring out the flavor. Use your favorite white chocolate (Valrhona is fantastic, if a bit expensive. This site has a list of the best brands for white chocolate.)

Though frankly, I found minimal differences, as long as you use one with cocoa butter as second ingredient, showing it has a fairly high percentage. I’ve even used the cheap supermarket versions and found the cream utterly delicious. So no need to spend a fortune.

Make it Vegan

To make it vegan, all you have to do it find vegan white chocolate. Or make your own!

Make it (sort of) Keto

Customizing it to be relatively Keto Friendly is equally easy: Find sugar free white chocolate or make your own.

However pistachio butter has a few carbs itself, so you need to decide if it’s worth it to you.

But back to my trials.

I tried 5 Versions. Find out which one is best.

While I tried 5, 1 was shop bought (not pictured) and one turned out to be unusable for my purpose of making Dubai Chocolate. So I took pictures of the 3 being both usable and home made.

Have a guess which one is best. Spoiler alert: Probably not the one you think.

Version 1 – Homemade Sicilian Pistachio Cream

I started with the classic version: Pistachio Cream made following the original Italian recipe using Butter and Milk, blanching the Pistachios to get the skins off, then processing everything until smooth.

Fazit:
It tasted ok. I know, a bit deflating, isn’t it? I thought so too.

Downsides:
For all the time invested in this, it came out rather short of my expectations. The pistachio flavor was pretty muted due to the additional ingredients, the texture was not as creamy as I had hoped, considering the Pistachios were soaked in water from the blanching process.

Most importantly: it soaked the fried Kataifi, meaning I couldn’t use it for Dubai Chocolate at all. Let alone to fill cookies, which was my evil masterplan.

Use:
As creamy cake filling or as spread that you will consume fairly quickly. I would not mix this with anything else, since the flavor is already pretty diluted.

This was months before I decided to go on a mission to find the perfect one, so apologies for no pictures.

Version 2 – Shop Bought Pistachio Cream

Yep, I went there.
Snapping up one of the currently unreasonably expensive jars of Pisti Pistachio cream, I figured for all the time invested it might still be worth it.

Fazit:
It tastes lovely, is creamy and has the light pastel green hue you’d want in a pistachio cream. Melts well and works of course perfect for Dubai chocolate. But I felt still not satisfied with the amount of Pistachio-y flavor I was getting from it. There had to be a better, cheaper and more reliable way to get Pistachio cream!

Use:
For anything you like, Dubai Chocolate included. If you can find it and want to pay the rather steep price.
But if you want a real Pistachio flavor punch, read on.

Version 3 – Make my own Pistachio butter. Skin on.

The third version has pistachios that came shelled but with the skin on. I roasted them, used my Vitamix* to grind them into Pistachio butter.

Then put it into the microwave with a 1:1 ratio of white chocolate and stirred everything together.

Fazit:
This was my personal favourite flavor wise, because it tastes just so fresh and intensely nutty. It also has a fairly high fibre content due to leaving the skins on, which is always a bonus in my book. Though the flavor advantage vanished after a day, compared to the final version.
I also found it’s the pistachios with skin on are the easiest to blend into proper Pistachio Butter using the Vitamix *.

It came out pretty creamy with just a tad of graininess left, which didn’t bother me as the flavor more than made up for it.

Use:
For anything really that doesn’t rely on perfectly smooth cream but needs lots of flavor. I filled cookies with it, and it was perfect, as the cookies have some crumbs and structure anyway, so you won’t notice a hint of leftover pistachio grain. And when I say hint, I really mean hint.

Downside:
It’s still a bit time consuming to make and the cleaning of the Vitamix * (especially under the blades) is a hassle!
I could either soak it multiple times in really hot water and detergent, as the standard cleaning program wouldn’t get it off, or take apart the blade, to get underneath. *sigh*

Version 4 – Ready Blanched Pistachios

The fourth version is made from the deeply green already skinned pistachios you can find for example at KoRo (neither affiliated nor sponsored, just where I found mine) ground into something resembling butter and then mixed with white chocolate as above in the microwave.

Fazit:
I thought making the butter with the untoasted version should lead to a super creamy and bright green pistachio butter, considering they are slightly softer than roasted. But nope. Grainier and less creamy than the skin on version above.

Downsides:
It nearly burned out my poor Vitamix * and still didn’t give me a perfectly smooth butter. Good, very bright and green, but a hint of graininess left.

The flavor was very mild. Miles from the intense roasted version.

Use:
In recipes where you really want the bright green colour and don’t mind a hint of grain, like, say a cake filling where you mix it with mascarpone, so it’s creamier anyway. Maybe add a hint of almond flavor to emphasize the pistachio, as they are very similar in character.

I gave it another try roasting the bright green pistachios, which worked better than unroasted, but still left a bit of graininess, despite all my Vitamix power. And I really wanted a perfectly smooth version!

Version 5 – ready made pistachio butter

The fifth and final version is made with ready bought pistachio butter made from roasted pistachios.

I admit I tried a fair few pistachio butters from different companies and the one I finally settled for was from KoRo. (Not affiliated or sponsored)
It is perfectly smooth and creamy and tastes intensely Pistachio-y. I could (and will) just eat it by the spoonful.

I simply plopped the butter and white chocolate into a microwave safe bowl, gave it 50 seconds in the microwave, stirred and voila! The most perfectly smooth pistachio cream!

Fazit:
While the flavor is just a hint less intense than the version with homemade pistachio butter on day 1, because I didn’t just roast and grind the pistachios myself, this was super creamy and still incredibly intense in pistachio flavor.

After a day the flavor difference was gone and due to the smooth texture, this was a clear winner to me.

From a price point, considering you’d have to have a rather expensive High speed blender * in the first place, to make the fresh version, this is also much cheaper.

Plus it saves you the work of cleaning your Vitamix from making nut butter and makes short notice projects that much more achievable!

Use:
For anything and everything including Dubai chocolate!

If you want the bright green hue from the blanched version, I would rather add some matcha powder or food dye to this quick and super creamy mix, than go through the hassle of blanching and peeling, just to get a still slightly grainy paste.

So did you guess the right one from the picture above?

I found the super smooth and yet easiest version is by far the best.
Not just does it safe a lot of cleaning, it’s also the quickest of them all. Yet the tastiest.

This makes it Cheaper Than Shop Bought Pistachio Paste

600g (21.2oz) of the original Pisti Pistachio cream set you back about 32€/ $.

I got a 1kg (just over 2lb) bucket of Pistachio butter for about 58€.
Let’s make this comparable:

Considering I use 1 cup for the cream, that will be 17.4.€

White chocolate, depending on which one you choose, can be anywhere from 10€ to 100€ (if you want, say Valrhona), but I made this with the cheapest one I could find in my local supermarket, and it still came out perfect.

Let’s assume the one I chose, which is about 1€. You’ll use 3 bars (each 100g here) to get to the 600g of ready bought Pistachio cream.

Which brings us to 20€ for the same amount. 1/3 less than shop bought.

Depending on the prices where you live of course, but considering the shortage of Pistachio cream currently, I’m sure it’s similar everywhere.

Even if you can’t find KoRo where you are, most bought nut butters will be much smoother than you can make them at home.

However, if you already have a Vitamix, it might be worth buying shelled Pistachios, as 2 lb is around 32€, which is close to half the price of butter. (prices might be slightly different where you are but should be similar in comparison).

Tip:

If you make Pistachio butter in your Vitamix, make at least 2 cups and max 3, as this is the amount the machine performs best with. 1 cup is too little to be pulled into the blades properly, more than 3 will get it too hot.

Considering how good it is, aim for 3. You’ll thank me later.

Follow the manufacturers instructions of starting low, then going to the highest speed within 10 seconds for a few seconds. Then go back to medium speed until it’s creamy. This gave me the best results.

Staying on low never became creamy at all. Staying on high had the blades just spin uselessly after a certain point. Despite pushing the paste down with the tamper, mixing it up multiple times with a scraper and performing all kinds of antics. So low, quick to high, back to medium is my formula for success.

The Ingredients

Let’s get to the recipe for my favourite version and the easiest of them all, shall we?
I already gave it away above, didn’t I?

The Pistachios

Buy some Pistachio butter.

Don’t mix up paste and butter though. Butter is purely made from pistachios. No sugar, ideally no oil either. I tried a few until I settled for the smoothest and most intensely pistachio-y tasting, which I found on Koro.com (Not affiliated or sponsored)

The consistency is unlike any nut butter I ever tried: Super creamy, dripping off your spoon. Just what I needed for my plan.

The White Chocolate

Then I got myself some white chocolate. Thankfully much easier to find!

Maybe my palate isn’t sophisticated enough, but any will do. Even the fairly cheap stuff I found at Tesco. Just make sure cocoa butter is the second on the ingredients list. In my tests I noticed virtually no difference between Lindt, which is usually my favourite brand, and the relatively cheap shop brand bars. So, clearly I went for the latter for this recipe.

Just go with standard eating chocolate, as couverture contains more cocoa butter. Which sounds like a good idea, but since we are using pistachio butter, having already a high fat content, we don’t need any extra.

The Process

Get ready for your 5 minute magic.

Grab a small, microwave safe bowl. Spoon the pistachio paste into it. Break your white chocolate into pieces and drop it in. Microwave for 50 seconds. No more for now, as white chocolate has a very low melting point and might split and crumble if it gets too hot. The pistachio butter buffers the heat a bit yet distributes it evenly throughout the chocolate.

Stir. Wait a minute or 2. Stir again. Usually by now the while chocolate has melted into the pistachio butter. If not, give it another 10-20 seconds in the microwave and another minute of wait and stir. It depends on your white chocolate and the starting temperature of your ingredients. For mine 50 sec was enough.

Try your creamy, dreamy pistachio cream. Sigh with satisfaction. Grab a slice of toast, like in a trance and drizzle the magic all over it. Take a bite. Be happy.

And honestly, I really think this tastes much better than the ready bought version!

Tip:
If you made this the day before or earlier and want to mix the cream into, say, crunchy Kataifi, microwave it for about 10 seconds, stir and see if it’s soft enough. If not, add another 10 and it should be fine.

If you want to use this as filling for something (say cookies), where you need it to be firm to begin with, spread it on a baking parchment lined cookie tray and freeze it for about 30 minutes, then cut it to the size you need.

How To Store

Or storing your Pistachio Cream:

Due to the high white chocolate content, the cream gets relatively firm once it sets. So if I want to use it, I keep mine on the counter, where it will last at least a week. Probably longer, but I always eat mine before.

The fridge is also a good way to store it, if you want to make it well in advance for a recipe. It will last a minimum of 3 weeks in there.

You can also freeze it. I froze this in sheets and then cut it up for an upcoming cookie recipe and it was perfect. Still super creamy, no icy crystals at all. I transferred it into a freezer bag after cutting it up and even though I used mine fairly quickly, it should stay fresh for about 6 months, based on the ingredients. The high fat content means, it will melt very quickly once taken out.

FAQ

Now I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Have you tried this? Did you enjoy it?
What other recipes would you like to see?

If you enjoyed this recipe, please share. It helps me a lot.

If you liked this recipe, Here are some other Pistachio Recipes to try:

Pistachio Cookies made with Brown Butter and protein powder, filled with this Pistachio Cream

A bright citrussy Orange Cake with Pistachios and Protein

Protein Muffins with Pistachio and Apricots

Caramel flavored Pavlovas with Pistachio Protein Cream and fresh Lime Strawberries