Costco Pistachio Cream Recipe

The pistachio cream sold at Costco is Pisti's spreadable pistachio cream, a sweet spread from Sicily that is 45 percent pistachio. To make about a cup and three quarters at home, grind seven ounces of peeled pistachios to a liquid paste in a food processor, then blend in powdered sugar, milk powder, melted white chocolate and three tablespoons of oil until smooth.

What the pistachio cream at Costco is

Costcuisine reviewed it in April 2022 as Pisti Spreadable Pistachio Cream, Costco item number 1607671: a 600-gram jar for 11.99 Canadian dollars, shelved with the jams and nut butters, with the instruction on the jar not to refrigerate it. The reviewer weighed out a 35-gram serving, for which the label gives 197 calories, 12.3 grams of fat and 16.7 grams of sugar.

Pisti, the maker in Bronte in Sicily, lists the ingredients of the 600-gram jar: 45 percent pistachio, sugar, milk powder, whey powder, vegetable fats (sunflower oil and cocoa butter), extra virgin olive oil, soy lecithin and flavourings.

The copy follows that list. It is 45 percent pistachio by weight, and the white chocolate brings the cocoa butter and part of the milk. A serving of two tablespoons comes to about 190 calories by USDA figures. MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Pisti or Costco.

Recipe

Pistachio Cream

A homemade version of the Pisti pistachio cream sold at Costco — pistachios ground with powdered sugar, milk powder, white chocolate and oil into a sweet spread. About 1 3/4 cups, twelve servings of 2 tablespoons.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

20 min

Cook

15 min

Total

35 min

Serves

12

Cuisine

Italian

Ingredients

• 7 ounces shelled unsalted pistachios (about 1 1/2 cups)
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup instant nonfat dry milk
• 3 ounces white chocolate (chopped)
• 3 tablespoons sunflower oil
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Instructions

1. Bring a small pot of water to a boil, add the pistachios and boil for 1 minute. Drain them, rub them in a kitchen towel and pick the nuts out of their loosened skins.
2. Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and dry them in a 250°F oven for 15 minutes, without letting them colour. Let them cool.
3. Process the pistachios in a food processor for 8 to 10 minutes, scraping down the sides every 2 minutes, until they turn from crumbs to a clump and then to a loose, shiny paste.
4. Melt the white chocolate in a small bowl in the microwave in 20-second bursts, stirring in between.
5. Add the powdered sugar, the dry milk and the salt to the pistachio paste and process for 1 minute. With the machine running, pour in the melted chocolate and the oil and process for 1 to 2 minutes more, until smooth.
6. Scrape the cream into a clean jar. It pours while warm and thickens to a spread as it cools.

Nutrition

Calories:

190

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Ten minutes in the food processor

Pistachios pass through four stages: crumbs, a damp meal, a clump that rides around the bowl, and then a loose paste as the nuts release their oil. The last stage takes eight to ten minutes, and the bowl gets warm. Stopping at the clump gives a gritty cream.

A small food processor or the small jar of a blender handles this amount. In a large bowl, so few nuts ride up the sides and escape the blade.

Green, not brown

• Peeling takes off the purple-brown skins, which turn the cream khaki.
• Drying at 250°F removes the water from blanching without roasting the nuts. Roasted pistachios give a brown cream with a toasted taste.
• Raw, unsalted nuts. Roasted, salted pistachios make the cream salty and dull in colour.

As a filling for Dubai chocolate and donuts

Mixed with toasted kataifi, the cream is the crunchy filling of Dubai chocolate. Toast 2 ounces of kataifi in a tablespoon of butter until golden, let it cool and stir it into 3/4 cup of the cream just before using it.

That amount fills the eight Dubai donuts on this site, and the same mixture goes into the Dubai chocolate bar.

In coffee, on toast and on croissants

A tablespoon whisked into a quarter cup of hot milk dissolves and makes a pistachio creamer for one cup of coffee. Stirred into cold milk it stays a lump. The iced Dubai chocolate matcha uses it the same way, whisked into the warm matcha first.

As a spread it goes on toast and crêpes, and into a split croissant. Costco's own pastry with a nut filling is copied in the almond croissant recipe.

A month in the cupboard

The cream contains no water, so it keeps for a month in a closed jar at room temperature. In the refrigerator it sets hard, because the white chocolate firms up when cold; ten seconds in the microwave loosen it. Oil that rises to the top is stirred back in.