Olive Oil Cake (and a Chocolate Version)
Moist, keeps for days, and quietly sophisticated — olive oil cake is the cake that lets the oil itself be the flavour. Once you make one, the butter version starts to feel heavy.
Using olive oil instead of butter does two things to a cake: it makes the crumb extraordinarily moist (and keeps it that way for days), and it brings a subtle, grown-up, fruity flavour butter can’t. It’s also dairy-free, and dead easy — no creaming, just whisk and pour.
A simple olive oil cake
Whisk 3 eggs with 180 g sugar until pale; whisk in 150 ml good extra virgin olive oil and 120 ml milk (or orange juice), with the zest of a lemon or orange. Fold in 200 g flour with 2 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt. Pour into a lined tin and bake at 175 °C (350 °F) for ~40 minutes.
The chocolate version
Replace 40 g of the flour with cocoa, drop the citrus, and add a splash more milk — the olive oil and dark chocolate are a famous pairing, deep and almost savoury.
This is the rare baking job where the oil is a flavour, not just fat, so it’s worth using a real, fresh, fruity extra virgin rather than a tired one — a fruity, mild oil (an Arbequina style) for a delicate cake, a bolder, peppery oil if you want it to assert itself against the chocolate. Don’t use “light” olive oil; it’s refined and flavourless, which defeats the entire point. And don’t overbake — the magic of this cake is how moist it stays.