The olive oil cake is the Italian cake that stays moist for four days on the bench, uses up the bottle of middling olive oil you do not want to drizzle on salads, and looks effortless when you slice it.
Why you are cooking this tonight
The olive oil cake is the Italian cake that stays moist for four days on the bench, uses up the bottle of middling olive oil you do not want to drizzle on salads, and looks effortless when you slice it. Orange zest and a splash of juice pull it into dessert territory. Served at room temperature with a dollop of mascarpone it can end any serious dinner.
Use a decent extra-virgin olive oil – not the fifty dollar one, but not the supermarket blend either. Something with character. The cake will taste like the oil you put in it, so it is worth being slightly fussy.
Notes on method
Zest the orange before you juice it. Finish with a light glaze of orange juice and icing sugar for extra hit, or leave it plain and serve with mascarpone.
What to pour with it
Moscato d’Asti or a small glass of Rutherglen topaque. Cocktail: a Negroni before dinner.
The recipe
Ingredients
Method
- Preheat oven to 170°C fan-forced. Grease and line a 22cm round cake tin.
- Beat eggs and sugar until pale and thick, 3 minutes.
- In a slow stream, whisk in the olive oil until emulsified. Add milk, orange juice, zest and vanilla. Mix until combined.
- Sift flour, baking powder and salt. Fold into wet ingredients just until combined.
- Pour into tin. Bake 45-50 minutes until deeply golden and a skewer comes out clean.
- Cool in tin 10 minutes, turn out onto a rack.
- Optional glaze: whisk icing sugar with orange juice until pourable. Drizzle over cooled cake, let drip down sides. Serve with mascarpone or Greek yoghurt.
Nutrition
Two things that go wrong
You used cheap olive oil.
The cake tastes of the oil you put in it. Bottom-shelf supermarket oil gives you a flat, slightly bitter cake. A decent extra-virgin (think $20-$30 a bottle) makes a noticeable difference. You don’t need the $50 bottle, but you do need not the $5 one.
Your eggs weren’t beaten enough.
The volume comes from beating eggs and sugar to the ribbon stage, pale, thick, and tripled in volume. Takes 5 minutes minimum on high. Skip this and you get a flat, dense cake.
Variations worth knowing
Lemon and rosemary
Replace orange zest with lemon zest, fold in a tablespoon of finely chopped fresh rosemary.
Almond and orange blossom
Replace 50g of flour with almond meal, add a teaspoon of orange blossom water to the batter. Middle-Eastern fragrance.
Chocolate and orange
Sift 30g cocoa with the flour, add 100g chopped dark chocolate. Sticky, deep, and orange-bright.
Leftovers and make ahead
Keeps brilliantly, actually improves on day two. Wrap in foil at room temperature for 4 days, or freeze whole for 3 months. Toast slices in butter for breakfast (yes, breakfast cake is a thing). Or layer leftovers with mascarpone and berries for an instant trifle.
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