{"id":17100,"date":"2014-06-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-23T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hopeful-davinci.104-238-165-7.plesk.page\/fennel-rose-olive-oil-cake-html\/"},"modified":"2023-06-26T17:11:52","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T17:11:52","slug":"fennel-rose-olive-oil-cake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/localmilkblog.com\/2014\/06\/fennel-rose-olive-oil-cake.html","title":{"rendered":"Herbes de Provence & Rose Olive Oil Cake"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Fennel<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Fennel<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Santa<\/a><\/p>\n

I make this cake so many ways\u2014with herbs and spices, citrus juice and spirits, and various extracts and essences. I\u2019ve never added fruit or nuts, because I prefer the crumb unadulterated, but I\u2019ve started to wonder how peaches might fare. I bake it in layers, in bundts, in tiny little flower molds. It\u2019s a house favorite, a backbone of my cooking-for-many repertoire. Why? Because it\u2019s as simple as making pancakes, bakes up to have a moist interior and a crispy, golden exterior, and because it\u2019s a blank slate for whatever floral notes or earthy spice I want to infuse it with that day. I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Fennel<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Fennel<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Fennel<\/a><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t remember when olive oil came into my life; it wasn\u2019t 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<\/em> and feel proud. Feeling like I knew a thing about cooking, men, and books\u2014things my grandmother and mother didn\u2019t know. I, it turns out, didn\u2019t know much of anything other than how to make a spectacular mess of hearts. But I learned. Anyhow, you\u2019d have been hard pressed to find a bottle of olive oil in my grandmother\u2019s kitchen. I doubt there ever was one. For most of my life my cooking was Italian and French inspired only and always. I didn\u2019t 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, saut\u00e9ing, vinaigrettes, pan frying, and all manner of drizzling. The one thing it didn\u2019t occur to me to do was bake with it, but I wasn\u2019t really known for my baking back then anyhow. It was all a bit crude, really.<\/p>\n

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 \u00a0stand on its own as a sauce. Currently, I\u2019ve been happily going through bottles of oil from California Olive Ranch<\/a>; I\u2019m particularly partial to the bold Miller\u2019s Blend<\/a> (they aren\u2019t paying me to say so; it\u2019s just delicious). Good doesn\u2019t 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\u2019m a bit of a collector.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

This cake is special. With both a full cup of oil and buttermilk in it, it\u2019s incredibly moist but the crust is crispy. It\u2019s 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\u2019ve yet to analyze myself to figure out why. That said, I\u2019ll have all I could ever want that night. We leave for New Orleans on the 30th. It will be the second time I\u2019ve 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\u2019ll eat you a live or give you new life. Hard to ever say which. But you\u2019ll have oysters and crawfish either way, so it\u2019s never so bad. And on my 31st I\u2019ll be having a quiet dinner at P\u00eache and walking my old stomping grounds, dodging old ghosts and meeting new ones. And maybe when I get home I\u2019ll celebrate with family & a slice of this cake.<\/p>\n

\"Fennel<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Fennel<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Fennel<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Fennel<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Santa<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Fennel<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

<\/div>
\n
\"\"<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n\t
\n
\n

Table of Contents<\/p>\nToggle<\/span><\/path><\/svg><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n