Lemon Olive Oil Cake

I have been dream­ing of all things lemon since the begin­ning of time. Dur­ing my last preg­nancy I was lemon obsessed, which isn’t unusual for me given the fact I have been dream­ing about lemons since before Adam was sim­ply mere dirt wait­ing to be formed. But it got to the point where Mike was all like “REALLY, you need MORE lemon?! You are going to turn into a lemon!” And my response was “What­ever, your just jeelus because you think I love lemons more than you.” And he was all “Why don’t you just marry a lemon then.” And I was all “Maybe I will! BAM!! I win.” Because we are all totally mature like that. In fact, this is how all our con­ver­sa­tions go or at least how I choose to remem­ber them.

Any­way as part of my quest for all things lemon I had to make a lemon olive oil cake.  Because both lemons and olive oil are gifts from God and while it sounds like an odd com­bi­na­tion for a cake the olive oil takes place of but­ter cre­at­ing a vel­vety tex­ture to the cake and lemon pro­vides a bright, light punch.  I also pre­fer extra vir­gin olive oil because it pro­vides a delec­table fruiti­ness (is that a word? well it is now!) to the cake. Although one could use reg­u­lar olive oil if need be.

Again you may think it sounds crazy but really this cake is amaz­ing. Absolutely Amazing.

It is also the pre­fect addi­tion to a feast day. We had this lemon olive oil cake last night in honor of St. Fran­cis of Assisi.  It is right dessert to have at the table when you want a bright and fresh end to an Ital­ian din­ner or who am I kid­ding when you want it for any reason!

What You Need:

Cake:

2 Table­spoons of Fresh Lemon Juice

Zest of 1 Medium-Large Lemon (1–2 Teaspoons)

1 Cup of All Pur­pose Flour

5 Egg yolks

4 Egg Whites

3/4 Cup of Extra Vir­gin Olive Oil

3/4 Cup of Sugar

1/2 Tea­spoon of Salt

Lemon Icing Glaze:

3–4 Table­spoons of fresh Lemon Juice

1 Cup Pow­dered Sugar

Olive Oil or But­ter to coat pan & light dust­ing of Flour (makes it not stick)

Cook 350 degrees, in mid­dle of oven, for 40–45 minutes

How To Put It Together:

In a small bowl add the olive oil & 2 table­spoons of lemon juice, mix it together and set aside. You will add it into the cake bat­ter in just a minute.

In a mix­ing bowl beat the yolks together with 1/2 cup of sugar at high speed.  Beat it for 2–3 min­utes until the mix becomes thick and pale.  Reduce the speed to a medium and add the olive oil & lemon juice mix.

On a slow speed add in the flour & lemon zest.  Incor­po­rate only do not over mix. (orig­i­nal recipe calls for fold­ing in with a wooden spoon, I did fine with the mixer but had to do it on a very slow speed & just to incorporate).

Now in a small bowl beat your egg whites (4) with the 1/2 tea­spoon of salt.  Beat these together until you have a foamy mix­ture, use a medium to high speed for this.  As you are beat­ing them slowly add in the rest of the sugar (1/4 cup) so you can cre­ate soft peaks in the egg white-sugar com­bi­na­tion.  If you mess this up don’t worry, you will still have a bang­ing cake but it might be a slightly denser texture.

After this fold in the soft peaky-egg whites mix­ture to the pre­vi­ous egg yolk-flour bat­ter.  For this don’t use the mixer, I found it was much eas­ier to use a wooden spoon or spat­ula to fold these in and will keep the cake from get­ting tool dense.

Pour the com­pleted bat­ter into the lightly oiled/buttered & floured cake pan above.  You can use a bread loaf pan, reg­u­lar 9 inch round cake pan or a spring­form pan.  After you have the bat­ter in the pan, tap the bot­tom of the pan on a counter/table top to remove air bub­bled. Then pop in the oven.

Bake on a rack in the mid­dle of the oven at 350 degrees for 40–45 min­utes.  Use the old tooth­pick in the cen­ter of the cake to see if it is cooked through. If you stick the tooth­pick in the cen­ter of the cake it should come out clean when the cake is fully cooked.

Once done cool for 10 min­utes in the pan, then remove from pan, place on serv­ing plate & top with the lemon icing glaze.  You can make the lemon icing glaze while your cake cools by mix­ing pow­dered sugar & lemon juice in a small bowl.

Serve to hun­gry crowd.

A few caveats: You could also put a piece of parch­ment paper on the bot­tom of the cake pan before adding in your cake bat­ter. If you do this make sure the parch­ment paper is well oiled/buttered & that you remove the parch­ment paper before adding the glaze.  I haven’t ever both­ered with this, it hasn’t caused any prob­lems so far at least in my per­spec­tive.  Also, I used all pur­pose flour because that is what I had on hand, the orig­i­nal recipe calls for cake flour (not self-rising) it worked fine.

You could also go with a non-lemon glaze, a good dose of pow­dered sugar or home­made whipped cream on top with fresh fruit.

Adapted from Gourmet Mag­a­zine April 2006

Tagged as: cake, comfort food, cooking, dessert, easy recipe, food, food & drink, homecooking, homemade, lemon, olive oil, recipe, simple recipe