dessert/ Fruit/ Jim Lahey/ Low fat/ my favorites/ quick cake/ scalable

Orange Olive-Oil Cake | Torta D’olio D’oliva

Don’t let a simple cake like this fool you. It delivers spectacular flavor, uses wholesome ingredients, and easy to mix by hand. If you attend to the details, this cake will sing. Best of all, an Italian orange olive-oil cake has the big advantage of using 100% olive oil which has less saturated fat and no dietary cholesterol. Serve it for breakfast with fresh fruits and a cup of latte. In other times during the day, serve it with prosecco or ice cream, you’ll be a happy camper.

Besides, olive oil is preferred over butter in recipes that include spices and citrus on the ingredient list.

What to look for when you buy olive oil:

  • Most important is its freshness, because olive oil is perishable.
  • Once opened, it retains its peak flavor for three to four weeks.
  • Look for a brand with date-labelling (the month and year of harvest).
  • When warmed, fresh olive oil smells like olives.

Back to the orange olive-oil cake, one advice regarding the ingredients: Don’t skim on the amount of orange zest, or high-quality extra virgin olive oil or whole milk. This simple cake needs every one of these ingredients for it to shine and you taste them in the cake. Since there is a quite lot of zest (from two oranges), more than most recipes, I thought I can get away with using less. Of course you can, but the flavor suffers immensely. Therefore, I won’t cut back on the orange zest. It flavors the olive oil as well the batter. Olive-oil cake works best with the full throttle orange flavor. Period.

Best advice I can give when it comes to the cake batter: Do not overmix. A high degree of gluten development from over-mixing would result in a dense cake. Additionally, the use of cake or pastry flour (lower amount of protein) is a good alternative to all-purpose flour.

I was not pleased with cracks showing on top of the orange olive-oil cake the first few times I made it. Subsequently, I changed a few things: pan size, oven temperature, mixing in a stand mixer. Nothing seems to work well together to promote evening baking of this cake. Then the water-bath method in baking creme brulee comes to mind. And there are ways to devise a less-cumbersome technique. Next, I wrap an aluminum foil collar around the cake pan in order to prevent the side of the pan from heating up too rapidly. That does it!

A foil collar works to eliminate cracks on top of the cake

To make sure all the cylinders are firing in ensuring even baking, put the cake pan on the bottom third rack of the oven. Use conventional mode in the oven set at 350°F, with the convection fan off. Bake for about 50 minutes, until the toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

The recipe is good for an 8-inch round cake. If you use a 9-inch cake, the cheat sheet below gives you the amount you need in grams. You’d need a scale to measure the ingredients accurately. As always, I use a scale for all my baking. It’s one of my best and reliable friends in the kitchen.

Orange Olive-Oil Cake

Ingredients

  • 156 grams of all-purpose flour about 1 1/3 cups
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt or 1/2 teaspoon of table salt
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • zest of 2 navel oranges
  • 1/4 cup fresh orange juice
  • 2/3 cup whole milk
  • 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Instructions

1

Preheat oven to 350° F. Place a rack in the bottom third of the oven. Line the bottom of an 8-inch cake pan with a circle of parchment paper.

2

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and the salt.

3

In a medium size bowl, whisk together sugar, zest, eggs, orange juice, milk and the olive oil until well combined.

4

Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl with the flour mixture. Stir until just mixed, scraping down the sides and the bottom with a spatula to make sure you incorporated all of the flour. Do not over mix. There may be some small lumps in the batter. It is fine.

5

Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan. Bake for about 45 to 50 minutes. The top will be nicely browned and a cake tester will come out with a few moist crumbs.

6

Let cool for only 5 minutes. Run a knife around the sides of the pan and then turn the cake out onto a cooling rack.

Notes

Adapted from Jim Lahey's Sullivan Street Bakery

Thermoworks Specials

ThermoWorks Thermapen Mk4 Backlit

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8 Comments

  • Reply
    Mary Kay Doyle
    August 31, 2020 at 8:30 am

    I cannot wait to try this! One question though, the recipe for an 8″ cake calls for 200 grams of flour, but the chart shows 156 grams. Which is correct? Thank you!

    • Reply
      Shirley@EverOpenSauce
      September 6, 2020 at 10:43 am

      I did not see this message until today, hence the delay. I bake according to the cheat sheet numbers. The recipe is adapted from the book which is where the 200 gram came from. To be consistent, I have made both numbers the same 156 grams. Sharp eyes, thanks!

  • Reply
    Mary Kay Doyle
    September 7, 2020 at 11:00 am

    Thank you so much! I made it twice before I saw your response. First with 200g, and then with 156g. Both were delicious, but using less flour made a very noticeable difference for the better.

    • Reply
      Shirley@EverOpenSauce
      September 10, 2020 at 11:39 pm

      I saw old notes that reflected the same conclusion that less flour works better. So glad you like the results and enjoy the cake.

  • Reply
    Melissa
    September 14, 2020 at 9:02 pm

    Just made this cake in a 9 inch pan and measured all my ingredients in grams per the chart. The cake was delicious but had too much Olive oil. You could literally squeeze olive oil out of the cake when you pressed down on it. Will definitely be making this again but will cut the olive oil, probably by at least 10-20%.

    • Reply
      Shirley@EverOpenSauce
      September 15, 2020 at 11:00 am

      Interesting results that I was not aware of baking this cake. Thanks for sharing and I’d certainly pay more attention to the amount of olive oil next time. Did you weigh the olive oil?

      • Reply
        Melissa
        January 21, 2022 at 9:10 am

        Made the 9″ cake again because it was delicious despite the extra oil and figure out what happened. I weighed all my ingredients when baking the cake (this time and last time) and the olive oil weights are significantly different than the suggested volumes. I.e. I think the weights are wrong for the oil. I added the oil by volume instead of by weight this time and the cake came out much better.

        • Reply
          Shirley@EverOpenSauce
          January 21, 2022 at 9:21 am

          Thanks for your continued interest in figuring what works better in this recipe. I’ll do some comparisons and fix the weight/volume conversions in the spreadsheet.

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