Recipe by Jodie Smith

Olive Oil Cake With Lemon and Almond

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BELAZU Crete Gold Extra Virgin Olive Oil (500g)

$49.95

Hand-packed and dispatched from our Corio, Victoria warehouse, with free delivery Australia-wide on orders over $100.

By Jodie Smith, Product & Hamper Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.

Olive oil cake is a one-bowl sponge where oil stands in for butter, so the crumb stays damp for days rather than hours. This one takes 200ml of extra virgin olive oil, three eggs, lemon and almond meal, bakes in about 45 minutes and serves 10. Use your mellow bottle, not the peppery one.

Belazu Crete Gold extra virgin olive oil, the 500g bottle used to bake this lemon and almond olive oil cake

The oil is the recipe, so pick the right bottle

A butter cake tastes of sugar and vanilla. An olive oil cake tastes of the oil, because there are 200ml of it in a cake that weighs about a kilo and nothing else in the tin is loud enough to cover it. That makes the bottle you reach for the single decision that changes the result, and almost no recipe online will tell you which one to spend on.

We stock two Belazu extra virgins side by side and they are not interchangeable here. The Early Harvest is $59.95, and our own tasting note calls it a characterful oil with notes of grass, pepper, almond and banana, divine to dip and drizzle. That is a description of a finishing oil, and it is the one to keep for a bowl of it beside warm bread. Pepper does not bake out. It concentrates as the water leaves the crumb, then sits on top of the lemon and reads as bitterness at the back of the palate.

The Crete Gold is $49.95 and it is the one to bake with. It is single-variety Koroneiki grown on the western side of Crete, a rounder everyday oil, and 200ml of it in a sponge tastes like fruit rather than like a challenge.

If you would rather not put a $49.95 bottle in the oven at all, the Kangaroo Island extra virgin olive oil is $29.95 for 500ml and does the job without argument. Both bottles sit on our olive oil shelf, and Kangaroo Island Olives press theirs in South Australia.

The throat test, before anything goes in a bowl

You do not need to trust a label. Put half a teaspoon of the oil on your tongue, hold it for a moment so it warms, then swallow it and wait three seconds. A good oil gives you fruit first, then a little bitterness across the middle of the tongue, then a peppery catch at the back of the throat. That catch is pungency, and it is the thing that will still be in the cake tomorrow.

If the catch makes you cough, keep that bottle for salads and finishing and bake with something quieter. If it barely registers, you have the cake oil. Two teaspoons and 30 seconds settles a question that a price tag cannot.

Kangaroo Island Olives extra virgin olive oil bottles with a dish of poured oil, olive spr

Ingredients

Serves 10. Prep 15 minutes, bake 45 to 50 minutes, then an hour to cool. One bowl, one whisk, no mixer and no creaming, which is the reason this is the cake to make when the kitchen is already busy.

Ingredients

Cake
200ml	Belazu Crete Gold extra virgin olive oil, about 185g
200g	caster sugar
3	eggs, large, at room temperature
150g	plain flour
100g	almond meal
2 tsp	baking powder
1/4 tsp	fine salt
2	lemons, zest finely grated, then 60ml of the juice
100g	plain Greek yoghurt, at room temperature
Lemon syrup
60ml	lemon juice, from a third lemon if the first two are spent
40g	caster sugar
1/2 tsp	Pariya orange blossom water (optional)
To finish
2 tsp	icing sugar, to dust
	mascarpone or thick cream, to serve

The oil is the only thing here worth measuring properly. Two hundred millilitres is about 185g, and olive oil floats high in a jug, so a cook reading a jug at eye level usually pours short. Weigh it if you can. Ten grams either way is the difference between a damp crumb and a greasy one.

Almond meal and ground almonds are the same thing under two names, and either works. Blanched meal gives a paler, finer crumb; unblanched, with the skins left in, is nuttier and speckled. Do not swap in more flour to replace it, because the almond fat is part of what keeps the cake soft on day three.

The orange blossom water is optional and it is strong. Half a teaspoon in the syrup reads as a faint floral note behind the lemon. A whole teaspoon and the cake tastes like a hand cream, so start at half and taste the syrup before it goes near the tin. A 110ml bottle is $12.95 and it will outlast several cakes, which is the case for buying it once rather than for every recipe that asks.

A 22cm springform tin is the right size. In a 20cm tin the batter climbs, domes and cracks, and needs closer to an hour. In a 24cm tin you get a flatter cake in about 35 minutes, which is a fine thing if you want more crust per slice.

How it keeps, and what you can do the day before

This is a better cake on day two than on the day you bake it, so baking ahead is the plan rather than the compromise. Olive oil stays liquid at room temperature while butter sets firm, so an oil crumb does not go waxy overnight the way a butter sponge does, and the syrup carries on spreading through it for hours after it cools.

Keep it in an airtight tin at cool room temperature for four days. Do not put it in the fridge, which firms the crumb and flattens the lemon. It also freezes well: wrap the whole cake, or individual slices, and it holds for three months. Bring frozen slices back on the bench rather than in a microwave.

To serve it as a dessert rather than an afternoon cake, put mascarpone loosened with a spoonful of cream beside it, and a few raspberries or roasted apricots. It belongs with the other easy make-ahead desserts that get finished the day before.

Method

Taste the oil before you start. Half a teaspoon, warmed on the tongue, swallowed. If it catches hard at the back of the throat, use a milder bottle and keep this one for the table.
Heat the oven to 180°C, or 160°C fan. Grease a 22cm springform tin and line the base with baking paper.
Whisk the eggs and caster sugar for two minutes, until the mixture is pale and thick enough to leave a trail off the whisk that takes a second to sink.
Pour in the oil in a thin, steady stream, whisking as you go. Poured all at once it sits on top and takes twice as long to come together.
Whisk in the yoghurt, the lemon zest and 60ml of lemon juice. The batter may look slightly split at this point. It is the acid meeting the yoghurt, it is not a mistake, and the flour will pull it back.
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt over the bowl, add the almond meal, and fold with a spatula until you can no longer see dry flour. Fifteen or so turns. Stop there.
Pour into the tin, level the top and tap the tin once on the bench to release the biggest bubbles.
Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until the top is deep gold and a skewer in the centre comes out with a few damp crumbs on it. Leave the door shut for the first 35 minutes.
While it bakes, warm the lemon juice and sugar in a small pan until the sugar dissolves. Take it off the heat and stir in the orange blossom water if you are using it.
Prick the hot cake all over with a skewer, right to the base, and brush the syrup over in three passes, letting each one soak in before the next.
Cool in the tin for 20 minutes, then release the ring and cool completely on a rack. Dust with icing sugar just before it goes to the table. Do it any earlier and the sugar dissolves into the surface.

Questions about olive oil cake

Can you use extra virgin olive oil in a cake?

Yes, and it is the only kind worth using. The smoke point argument does not apply to baking: extra virgin olive oil smokes well above 180°C, and the inside of the cake sits near 100°C for as long as there is water in the crumb. Only the surface browns. Refined light olive oil is stripped of the flavour that gives the cake its name, so you may as well use canola.

Which olive oil is best for baking?

A mild to medium extra virgin, fruity rather than pungent, and one you would happily eat on bread. Save the assertive, peppery, early-harvest style for salads, soup and anything you finish raw. Between our two Belazu bottles that means the Crete Gold in the tin and the Early Harvest on the table. Buying one bottle for both jobs, choose the milder one: a gentle oil can be drizzled, a fierce one cannot be baked.

Why is my olive oil cake bitter?

Three usual causes. The oil first: polyphenols are what make an oil taste bitter and peppery, they do not cook away, and a fierce oil makes a fierce cake. The zest second, because a microplane taken too deep lifts white pith with the yellow, and pith is bitter with nothing to offer. Too much baking powder third, though that reads soapy rather than bitter. Level the spoon.

How long does an olive oil cake keep?

Four days in an airtight tin at cool room temperature, and it improves for the first two. That is longer than a butter cake, because the fat never sets solid in the crumb. It freezes for three months. Refrigeration is the one thing to avoid.

One bottle, two jobs

Bake with one, finish with the other, and you learn more about olive oil in an afternoon than a label will teach you. The Crete Gold goes in the tin, the Early Harvest gets drizzled over the first slice, and the rest of the Belazu range is where the harissa and the tagine paste live if you want something savoury from the same cupboard. As a gift, the olive oil gift box pairs the oil with a refillable ceramic pourer for $99.95. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day from our Corio, Victoria warehouse, tracked with Australia Post.

Products in this recipe

BELAZU Crete Gold Extra Virgin Olive Oil (500g)

$49.95

BELAZU Early Harvest Extra Virgin Olive Oil (500g)

$59.95

Kangaroo Island Olives - Extra Virgin Olive Oil 500ml

$29.95

Pariya Orange Blossom Water (110ml)

$12.95

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