It’s a tradition for a reason!
If you’ve never tried an olive oil cake you’re missing out. It’s simple, budget friendly, soooo moist, super tender and crazy yummy. It’s certainly a favorite in our house. Kinda like a pound cake and sponge cake had a baby but double the moistness. Plus baking with olive oil and honey are healthier alternatives to butter, other oils and other sweeteners.
This cake is very easy to assemble, one bowl and foregiving except you must bake long and slow. It’s a very wet batter that needs slow cook time in the oven.
This recipe gives you three flavor options - lime, lemon or orange. Lemon is most traditional but it’s truly a blank canvas for many possible favor directions. I’m testing a pineapple and a tart cherry version now for instance.
Btw it doesn’t taste like olive oil.
As usual when I work on recipes I reduce or replace sugars as much as possible. This one is half the total sweeteners of traditional recipes. It’s perfect for our palate but try yourself and tweak. You could always add more sweetener or a glaze or even a frosting to amp up sweetness or other flavors too. Just be careful not to mask the cake. We like it plain frankly the most. One less step for me!! 😁
Olive oil cakes are a traditional dessert from Mediterranean cooking that date back hundreds of years. Traditionally made on very special occasions including olive harvest festivals, Hanukkah and Christmas.
If you try this, please send us your results.
Ingredients:
1 cup extra virgin olive oil. Good to excellent quality preferably
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 1/4 cups whole milk* or buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Juice of either 2-3 limes, 1 large lemon or 1 medium orange
Zest to match chosen juice. Zest of either of 1 large lemon or 2 - 3 limes or 1 orange**
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Generously grease a 9-inch springform pan and line it with parchment paper and grease again. Other pans will work too just carefully grease and line it or you won’t get cake out easily.
- I like to use my stand mixer with the whisk attachment but a hand-mixer or just whisk by hand works fine. Just don’t use immersion blender.
- Combine the olive oil and eggs first until smooth. Then add all the wet ingredients (the milk, juice, zest, vanilla) plus the sugar/honey and combine again until smooth. Each time whisking a few minutes works for me, more if by hand.
- Add all the dry ingredients to the olive oil mixture all at once (flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda). Whisk to combine but do not over mix. Just mix until ingredients are just barely incorporated. Don’t forget to scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl.
- Place your springform pan on a cookie sheet, pour the batter into the pan, and bake in the oven for approximately 70 - 80 minutes. Every oven is different start checking at 60 mins.
- The cake will be done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs attached. If not ready continue baking for 5-minute increments until done. Internal temp should be 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Allow the cake to cool completely before cutting or finishing***
- Stays moist for days, you can make it easily a day or two ahead and freezes well.
* I use 50/50 water and cream when I don’t have whole milk handy. I even did this with evaporated milk and it was great. Buttermilk is really nice too
** The idea here is you pick either lemon juice plus zest, lime juice plus zest or orange juice plus zest. Zest more if you want more zest flavor.
*** Finish ideas:
- Serve in fat wedge. Note no finishing needed really. Plain is already awesome.
- Just powdered sugar for dusting. This also makes it look pretty
- Glaze. Try vanilla, lemon, orange, lime, cardamom…
- Frosting
- Some berries, fruit or compote on the side
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Olive oil cake recipe
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