Olive Oil Cake Experiment

As you know by now, I am in love with olive oil cakes.
I may never bake with butter again. Well, maybe that's a bit extreme, but there is something so good about a cake baked with olive oil.

We recently dined at Danny Meyer's newest NYC restaurant called Maialino, which means "Little Pig" in Italian.
It's a fabulous Roman Trattoria where pork is 90% of the menu.
I felt like a "little pig" when I left.

For dessert, I ordered the orange olive oil cake, and after the first bite I almost fell off my chair.
It was so moist, delicious and fragrant. I had to have the recipe.

I asked our server how much oil was in this cake? Mine never come out this moist.
She was nice enough to come back with the recipe partially written out for me on a torn piece of note paper.

Telling me there were a little under 2 cups of pricey Ligurian olive oil in one 10" cake! along with fresh squeezed orange juice and Grand Marnier!!!!
That's a pricey cake to bake. The bottle of olive oil costs $25, not to even mention the bottle of Grand Marnier.

I decided to try the recipe using half of the oil, and changing some things around.
I used the last of my winter clementines, and tried it in a loaf pan.



It was a hit! Moist, citrusy and the perfect olive oil cake. The best I have made to this date. Yay!

This is best made the day before and eaten the next day (hard to do, I know).

Stacey's Clementine Olive Oil Cake:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups of sugar
3/4 cup of mild Italian olive oil (I use Colavita extra virgin)
2/3 cup of fresh squeezed juice from 3 small peeled clementines (or 2 navel oranges)
zest of a clementine or orange

Grease a loaf pan and line with parchment paper to make for easy removal.

Mix flour with baking soda, powder and salt. Set aside.

In a food processor, whiz the peeled fruit to make 2/3 cup of fresh pulpy juice.
Save the peel for the zest.



Mix your eggs with sugar and oil until light in color.
Add fresh squeezed juice and zest.

Slowly mix in your dry ingredients into the oil mixture.

Pour into the prepared loaf pan and bake at 375F for 50-55 minutes.
Let rest in the pan for about 20 minutes before cooling on a rack.



This is a different animal when eaten the next day. Let it rest.
It will be so worth it!