Olive Oil Citrus Cake

For the past few years, I’ve noticed a silent but ever-waging war going on between different types of cooks. One group of cooks firmly believes that good food starts with good ingredients. Folks from this camp often justify expensive purchases like $30 tiny bottles of vanilla imported from Tahiti and $20 packs of dairy that come from grass-fed, free-range cows and chickens. It appears that this side is winning — these days, we have entire culinary movements with cute names (ehem, farm-to-table and bean-to-bar) based on this notion alone.

The other half, however, believes firmly the opposite and that good recipes transcend bad ingredients. This explains how cooks can easily rescue and save bad ingredients with some recipe tricks.

As for myself, I fall somewhere between the two. Although I mostly use generic pantry staples like flour and sugar, I’ve definitely been known to splurge for fancy ingredients. Because there are some ingredients that, once you’ve had the best version of it, it’s really, really, really hard to go back — stuff like vanilla extract, chocolate and olive oil.

Most recently, Red Ridge Farms sent me a box of olive oils to try from their olive oil milling branch, the Oregon Olive Mill. Their Arbequina extra virgin olive oil was impeccable — nutty and buttery, with rich floral and almost citrusy undertones. It was the perfect olive oil to use in a dessert, like this citrus olive oil cake:

Now, hold the phone. Olive oil? In dessert? Am I crazy? It’s totally a thing, I swear! Although most people associate olive oil with savory foods like bread and salad, it turns out that olive oil pairs very well with sugary fruit and nuts. Most recently, I’ve started noticing olive oil appear more and more in creamy desserts — olive oil flavored ice cream is on the menu at famed ice cream parlors around the country (San Francisco’s Humphry Slocombe and Portland’s Salt & Straw have it as a flavor staple), and I’ve had my eye on this particular recipe for olive oil cake for the better part of the year now. Food52 describes the recipe as “genius”, declaring it as “olive oil cake at its best” with a “crackling crust and an aromatic oil-rich middle, which, if it held any more moisture, would be pudding.” I couldn’t agree more. I’ve topped the cake with an extra portion of orange zest and a orange glaze to bring out the citrus notes in Oregon Olive Oil Mill’s extra virgin olive oil. Enjoy!


Some baker's notes:

• Be sure to use an olive oil that has floral and citrusy undertones! Avoid ones that are grassy and taste too much like olives — you don't want your cake tasting like a salad now, right? I recommend using extra virgin olive oil since it has a milder, cleaner flavor than regular olive oil.


• This recipe contains almost half a bottle's worth of olive oil, which, let's be honest, can add up fast. I know that not everybody can receive boxes of fancy, local olive oil for free, so my budget option is a bottle of a rubber spatula to fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, until the batter is smooth and one uniform color. 


• Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 1 hour, until the top of the cake is golden and a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a wire rack and allow to cool for 20 minutes, until running a knife around the edge of the pan and inverting the cake onto the wire rack to cool completely.


For the Citrus Grand Marnier Glaze:
1. In a medium bowl, use a rubber spatula mix together 2 cups confectioners' sugar, 2 tablespoons fresh squeezed orange juice and 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier until the ingredients turn into a pourable glaze. Depending on how dry your confectioners' sugar is, you might need to give or take a teaspoon or two of the liquid. Use immediately by pouring over the cake.
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