Citrus Olive Oil Cake

Brayden is one hundred and two weeks old. The full print-run of twenty copies of the catering-cookbook was delivered to the apartment Friday at three PM. The cookbook is now a real physical object in twenty copies. Mama and Aunt Linda are getting theirs next Saturday at the small distribution-gathering.

The citrus olive oil cake is a Mediterranean-style cake — flour, sugar, eggs, olive oil (good-quality), fresh-squeezed orange juice, orange zest, a small amount of lemon zest. The cake is dense, moist, and the olive-oil-and-citrus-flavor reads as fall-leaning even though the cake works year-round. The cake is one of the recipes that appears in the catering cookbook’s recurring-client-relationships chapter (the chapter where the relevant context is that I had served the cake at three different Singh-family events and it had become a small-signature item).

The technique question on an olive-oil cake is the oil-quality and the egg-whipping. The olive oil needs to be a good fruity-character oil (not a delicate olive-oil) so the cake’s flavor is olive-oil-forward. The eggs need to be whipped with the sugar for a full five minutes before the other ingredients go in — the whipping incorporates air that gives the cake its open-crumb structure.

Sunday I made a small bundt for the apartment and for the daycare-staff (the small thank-you cake Wendy and her aides will get on Monday morning when I drop Brayden off).

Mama and Cody have continued to run the small Sapulpa-cafe at its small steady-state pace. The breakfast rush moves through. The lunch-plate-special rotates daily. The Friday-regional-special slot keeps the small adventurous-element alive. Cody’s pop-up Tuesday continues to sell out within an hour of the Friday-menu-post.

The technique-detail I always lean on: the temperature of the cooking-surface matters more than the temperature in the recipe. A hot pan with cold ingredients fails. A medium pan with room-temperature ingredients succeeds. Let the small ingredients come to the small kitchen-temperature before the small cooking starts.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 1 hr | Servings: 10

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
3 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup good-quality extra-virgin olive oil
3/4 cup whole milk
1 tablespoon fresh lemon zest (about 2 lemons)
1 tablespoon fresh orange zest (about 1 orange)
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-inch round cake pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.
Mix dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
Beat eggs and sugar. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs and granulated sugar together vigorously for about 2 minutes, until the mixture is pale and slightly thickened.
Add wet ingredients. Whisk in the olive oil, milk, lemon zest, orange zest, lemon juice, and vanilla extract until well combined.
Combine. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and fold gently with a spatula until just combined — a few small streaks of flour are fine. Do not overmix.
Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake for 40—45 minutes, until the top is golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cool. Let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar before serving if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Citrus Olive Oil Cake