‘ORANGE & OLIVE OIL CAKE’
This is the ‘Orange & Olive Oil Cake’ I made, inspired by the Cenk’s recipe. He made his ‘Clementine and Olive Oil Cake’ inspired by the “Olive Oil and Sherry Pound Cake” recipe from Alice Medrich’s book “Pure Dessert”. Inspirations galore resulted in a lovely, moist cake, with a crumb as light as ever…& no butter! There is a very Mediterranean feel to the recipe…& the taste is even better 2 days later. My friend from the land of the babushkas got me some poppy seeds, & I was wondering what use to put them to? This did seem the perfect place to bung them in. The kids love the cake & the addition of poppy seeds has given it a nice crunch. The other alteration to the recipe is substituting a bit of flour with whole-wheat flour. That is one thing I always try to do whenever possible! It’s a feel-good factor thing for me!! It didn’t make the cake crumb any heavier, or the cake rise any less…very satisfying indeed!
Thank you Cenk…
The idea of mixing the zest about with the sugar is novel indeed. It flavours the sugar really nicely, & makes it look pretty too. Flavour…that’s the good thing about Alice Medrich’s book “Pure Dessert”. I have to lay my hands on it soon. Until then, its off to Cenk’s, or then to Meeta’s at WFLH, who, coincidentally, was baking a dessert from the very same book, while blogging a comment on the ‘Coffee Walnut Cookies’ I made!!
“Omit and substitute! That’s how recipes should be written. Please don’t ever get so hung up on published recipes that you forget that you can omit and substitute.” Jeff SmithThe recipe then…
Ingredients:
Flour – 1 1/2 cup
Wholewheat flour – 1/2 cup
Baking powder – 1 1/2 tsp
Salt – 1 pinch
Extra Virgin Olive Oil – 1/2 cup
Sugar – 1 cup
Zest of 3 oranges
Eggs – 3
Orange Extract – 1 tsp
Fresh Orange Juice – 1 cup
Poppy seeds – 2 tbsp + some for sprinkling on top
Method :
- Sift the flours + baking powder + salt together.
- Mix the sugar & zest so as to flavour the sugar.
Working with the magical microplaner (zester)…
- Grease & flour a 12 X 4 loaf tin. (I lined the bottom as well).
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
- Beat the olive oil & sugar well.
- Beat in the eggs one by one, followed by the orange extract.
- Beat in 1/3 of the flour mix, followed by 1/3 juice…repeat 2 times,finishing with the juice.
- Mix in the poppy seeds.
- Turn batter into prepared tin & sprinkle some poppy seeds on top.
- Bake for 50-60 minutes until done, till the tester comes out dry.
- Rest in tin on rack for 10 minutes. Remove from tin & cool on rack.
Have just found this interesting blog event…coincidence has it that this months’ ‘fresh produce’ is Oranges!! How nice…this is my entry to Marta’s blog ‘An Italian in the US’ which is dedicated this month to this delicious citrus fruit.