I make this cake so many ways—with herbs and spices, citrus juice and spirits, and various extracts and essences. I’ve never added fruit or nuts, because I prefer the crumb unadulterated, but I’ve started to wonder how peaches might fare. I bake it in layers, in bundts, in tiny little flower molds. It’s a house favorite, a backbone of my cooking-for-many repertoire. Why? Because it’s as simple as making pancakes, bakes up to have a moist interior and a crispy, golden exterior, and because it’s a blank slate for whatever floral notes or earthy spice I want to infuse it with that day. I’ve even subbed white wine that needed using for the citrus juice to good effect. Grand Marnier is good too. Maybe a nice Calvados and warm spices in winter. This cake is a hero with a thousand faces. Epic.
I can’t remember when olive oil came into my life; it wasn’t always there. I remember that it was exotic when I was learning to cook, and I felt worldly splashing it into my skillet in my apartment on Prytania St. in New Orleans, barely twenty and roasting thin, white filets of fish en papillote and feel proud. Feeling like I knew a thing about cooking, men, and books—things my grandmother and mother didn’t know. I, it turns out, didn’t know much of anything other than how to make a spectacular mess of hearts. But I learned. Anyhow, you’d have been hard pressed to find a bottle of olive oil in my grandmother’s kitchen. I doubt there ever was one. For most of my life my cooking was Italian and French inspired only and always. I didn’t cook southern food at all. I dismissed it like so much of the fabric of my youth. And so it went, my ignorant affair with olive oil. Eventually I, like so many American home-cooks, came to regard it as the oil, the only oil. And I bought it indiscriminately, using it in anything and everything from searing, sautéing, vinaigrettes, pan frying, and all manner of drizzling. The one thing it didn’t occur to me to do was bake with it, but I wasn’t really known for my baking back then anyhow. It was all a bit crude, really.
Now, olive oil is something I pay attention to. It keeps its place among the other fats, the grape seed oil and sweet butter, the coconut oil and leaf lard. There is a time and place for olive oil. I try to always get my hands on the best I can afford. Pure fruit and pepper on the tongue, the kind that runs thick and grassy green. The kind that can stand on its own as a sauce. Currently, I’ve been happily going through bottles of oil from California Olive Ranch; I’m particularly partial to the bold Miller’s Blend (they aren’t paying me to say so; it’s just delicious). Good doesn’t have to mean expensive. Cosco olive oil, the Kirkland brand, is perfectly respectable cooking oil. But when I can, I get the most beautiful, unadulterated bottles I can find. I’m a bit of a collector.
In summer thinly sliced veggies get nothing more than a glug of my best olive oil (my current favorite is a tin of it I brought back with me from Portugal, where I made this cake for our workshop picnic), the flakiest of salt, a few fresh herbs clipped from the porch garden, and a squeeze of lemon or drizzle of sherry vinegar (my preference over the ubiquitous balsamic, but that’s another post.) When the backbones of your cooking are strong, you need very little to make food shine. A great olive oil, fine butter, vinegar, and salt along with fresh herbs (woody thyme, parsley, and apple mint are my favorites) and local produce, meat, and dairy is pretty much all I ever need or use to make dinner.
This cake is special. With both a full cup of oil and buttermilk in it, it’s incredibly moist but the crust is crispy. It’s like one giant top of the cupcake. You know what I mean. My birthday is coming up here in a few days, my 31st. I only just remembered it was even happening because I was on the phone with my mother. I think forgetting your own birthday is a little bit satisfying. I’ve yet to analyze myself to figure out why. That said, I’ll have all I could ever want that night. We leave for New Orleans on the 30th. It will be the second time I’ve been back since Katrina after living there for near 5 years. I miss it, always have, and likely always will. A hearty portion of the constellation that is myself refuses to call anywhere else home. The air crackles there. The energy flows fast, dark and light, in great undulating channels, and they snake through the quarter and up the street car line and down through the cracks in the Bywater. If you can feel such things, your hair stands on end in that city. It’ll eat you a live or give you new life. Hard to ever say which. But you’ll have oysters and crawfish either way, so it’s never so bad. And on my 31st I’ll be having a quiet dinner at Pêche and walking my old stomping grounds, dodging old ghosts and meeting new ones. And maybe when I get home I’ll celebrate with family & a slice of this cake.
Ingredients
- 375 grams (3 cups) unbleached all purpose flour
- 1.5 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1.5 teaspoon flaky sea salt
- 3 tsp herb de provence
- 385 grams (2 cups) sugar
- 1/2 cup fresh grapefruit juice (o.j. works too)
- 1.5 tsp rose water (concentrate, like Nielson-Massey)
- 220 grams (1 cup) good olive oil
- 240 grams (1 cup) buttermilk
- 3 eggs
- 125 grams (1 cup) powdered sugar + more to thicken if needed
- 2 Tablespoons grapefruit juice
- 1/8-1/4 teaspoon rosewater, to taste
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350°F. Thoroughly grease your cake tin, most especially thoroughly if using a bundt pan.
- In a mixing bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, herb de provence, and sugar.
- In a separate bowl whisk together the grapefruit juice, olive oil, buttermilk, rose water, and eggs.
- Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and gently stir with a spoon to just combine, making sure to scrape the bottom. Do not overmix.
- Pour the batter about 2/3 way up the sides of your cake tins or pan (will make about 3 small bundt cakes or 2-3 8" layers depending on how thick you make them), and bake at 350°F for 30 minutes to an hour (depending on size of cakes). Cake should be a deep golden brown and a cake tester should come out clean when inserted. A few crumbs are fine; it just shouldn't be wet or goopy.
- Allow cakes to cool in their tins about 10 minutes, and then turn out onto a cooking rack to cool completely before icing.
- Meanwhile whisk together your glaze. In a bowl whisk the juice and rosewater into the powdered sugar. Add sugar if you need to thicken it to get it to a pourable but quite thick consistency. Alternately, you can thin it with additional juice or cream as needed. Spoon the glaze over your cake. And enjoy!
Notes
inspired by Maialino's Olive Oil Cake via Food52
Thank you Beth!!! Loved the post and can’t wait to make this cake!!! Love, love, love this recipe! Hope to see you soon. Let me know when you plan to visit New York, would be great to see you and wishes for a very very happy 31st birthday! xoxo
An FYI! To make it like I made it at the workshop, sub 3 tsp ground fennel seeds for the herb de provence! : )
Your photos – absolut perfection. This looks delicious, I would love this with lots of lavender. Your kitchen rules!
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This cake looks delicious! I love the addition of olive oil to baked goods, it add so much depth. Thank you for sharing and I hope you have the happiest of birthday!
This sounds sooo good, but how much fennel and how much lemon rind?
That was a typo! They aren’t in this recipe. It’s fixed now! : )
This is so stunning. Seriously.
Your pictures transferred me to another place…and I like it! Fantastic cake and keeping it in mind for my next brunch.
Still no spelt? You know you owned me one … 🙂
such dreamy gorgeous photos – just great. the food 52 recipe has been among my saved ones for quite a while, yet I´ve never made it until now. So your post = my reminder to finally bake with olive oil! merci!
I’m currently in Provence and here you can find the best olive oil! I have to try using olive oil in a cake somtime, however it’s gonna be glutenfree because I try not to eat so much gluten.
I also like using flowers and herbs from our french garden in my cooking and I recently made a post about homemade lavender lemonade on my blog!
Have a nice summer!
This cake look beyond amazing! I truly can’t wait to bake one. I love to use olive oil in baking; it’s ‘the secret ingredient’ in many cakes making them extra moist and luscious.
Happy Birthday, sweet Beth. May your day be filled with old memories and may you find precious new ones on the streets of New Orleans. xoxo
A cake for Midsummer Night’s Eve if ever there was one! Can’t you imagine Queen Titania tracing her fingers through swoops of olive oil and flicking rose petals at Puck?
So beautiful, and looks positively delicious! I just bought a basil olive oil that’s really good (the basil was pressed with the olives vs. just being infused), and I’m wondering if using that with some strawberries in a bread like this would be good. I love that combo so I think I’ll try! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
oh my gosh this sounds really tasty even tho i don’t know what it should taste like but i defo will be trying it out soon!! lol x
The cake truly looks delicious , but my heavens, your photos truly take my breath away. They are phenomenal. I am so glad that I found your blog. Your blog is a study on everything a food blog should be. Thank you for sharing.
This sounds amazing! I love the combo of rustic herbs and rose, so will definitely be trying this recipe sometime soon! Pinning it right now.
Everything about this is stunning. From the icing on the cake to the flowers… the photography is beautiful and the cake looks delicious!
Olive oil wasn’t always in my life either, but not it’s such a staple! Love this recipe 🙂
I’ve just started playing with olive oil in cake, and I have yet to make one that I was head over heels about. But, you know what? I haven’t tried a white cake base yet and that’ll probably do the trick.
I love how you always elevate the flavors in your cakes beyond their original story. You give them a new story that encapsulates a feeling beyond mere cake. You do this with so much of your work, really. It’s an inspiration to me as a writer and fledgling photographer.
And those cake pans. Damn.
happy almost birthday fellow cancer! i’m moved to make this! as you know, ratios shift when using alternative (glu-free) flours.
what’s the consistency of the batter we’re going for? that should help me assess the situation as i go using my (painstakingly) developed all purpose quick bread flour blend.
cheers beth, thank you. XO
Fresh olive oil is one of my favorite small pleasures. I go olive oil tasting almost as often as I go wine tasting. So far I have only added olive oil in my holiday chocolate pumpkin loaf, but I am very excited to try this recipe.
I love Herbes de Provence since my father lives in Southern France and it reminds me of my visits there. Funny though, while most of the store-bought herbes de provence we find here has lavendar, French people this it’s pretty odd to be cooking with it. LOVE that smell though.
So beautiful! I love rose scented cakes…and your photos take me back to Santa Susanna…
Happy Birthday, Beth – and have a fabulous time in New Orleans! Xx
olive oil in a cake … swoon 🙂
I thought I was the smarted man on earth, when I thought of making cake with Herbs the Provence (I came back two days ago), but looks like someone outsmarted me already. I was thinking of putting it into a vegan lemon sponge. Love the recipe.
Not sure what looks better, the cake or the photography. I truly enjoy your approach to your photos!
This looks and sounds delicious. I can’t wait to try it. Any tips for scaling it down? We are just 2, would love to share with others but only if I succeed 🙂
Beth,
I get a lot of food blogs, and yours is the only one I always look at. I love your photography. The day you published this I had just found my old jelly mold pans — how serendipitous. I skipped the rose water (not a big fan) and didn’t have any grapefruit juice (so used lemon). Made two cakes (in my two pans). One came with me to a dinner party and the other I enjoyed all by myself for the week. I was asked by several attendees for the recipe. It was so delicious and moist and flavorful. Hopefully you now have a few new subscribers due to this yummy and beautiful cake.
I made these today in Bundt-ette pans (2 pans – 6 portions each). I used orange juice and also included about 2 tsp. of orange zest. I baked them for 20 minutes and they are perfect, moist and delicious. Thank you!
This just came out of the oven, and it smells heavenly! I adapted to gluten-free with ease, thanks to your measuring the flour in grams. (A cornmeal, brown rice, and tapioca starch blend–to go with the orange zest I threw in. ) Every time I make olive oil cake it’s a reminder to do so more often. Thanks for exacting measurements and beautiful flavor combinations. Next time I will try the fennel seed & orange combo! Always a treat.
I made this cake tonight and ohmygod. I did not have any herbs de Provence so I got creative! I steeped earl grey teabags in warmed buttermilk and also added some ground earl grey into the flour mix. I added clementine zest into the oil as well as a few drops of bergamot oil. My only slip was not flouring the bundt pan I used. I greased it thoroughly but the top stuck upon removal! Next time I’d flour and allow it to sit 15 minutes rather than 10. Bundt pans are tricky! The rose water glaze I also added a few drops of bergamot oil to, perfection. I saved the cake by just leaving the rough top glazed and used the leftover chunks from the top to snack on, I couldn’t help myself. The flaky maldon salt I used in the batter really brought out the other flavors, it’s a beautiful, delectable imperfection.
could you make this in muffin tins/how would you modify baking time? thanks!