OLIVE OIL CAKE, MY WAY

Orange, saffron and Sherry are the subtle flavors in this olive oil cake. 

There are loads of recipes for olive oil cake out there. But, as someone as dedicated to cooking with olive oil as I am, I wanted my own cake. 

Traditional Spanish home cooking has myriad pastries and other sweets using olive oil. Think Andalusia’s famous frutas de la sartén (“fruits of the frying pan”) such as pestiños, or anise-spiked cookies such as tortas de aceite. But cakes, not so much. I wanted to create a cake with a real Spanish accent.

Beyond olive oil itself, what could be more Spanish than oranges or saffron or Sherry? Putting them all together, I came up with this gorgeous cake that can go plain or fancy. Serve it simply, with fruit, for breakfast, or split it into layers and tart it up with a favorite frosting for special occasions. For a birthday celebration at my house, I served the cake with an easy orange marmalade pouring sauce.

Serve the cake plain or fancy.

Orange blossoms for a springtime touch. Use orange flower water in the cake too.

Serve with orange wedges---

or with orange marmalade pouring sauce---

or with strawberries. Breakfast? Maybe it needs a dollop of Greek yogurt?

Olive oil makes a moist cake that keeps well.

Orange-Saffron-Sherry Olive Oil Cake
Bizcocho de Naranja con Azafrán y Vino de Jerez

What oil to use? Any extra virgin olive oil is fine. The Arbequina variety, usually from Catalonia, is exceptionally mild, slightly almondy. Manchegan Cornicabra is noticeably spicy when picked early and sweet for late harvest oil. Picual from Jaén has a peppery edge. Hojiblanca from Málaga is fruity. The olive oil I use is not single-varietal, but a blending of several extra virgins produced in Andalusia.

Use any Sherry you prefer. I used a dry fino, but a medium-dry or even sweet Sherry would work too. If you use sweet Sherry, you might want to decrease the amount of sugar.

Zest from one orange.

One large orange makes the quantity of zest and juice called for in the recipe. Orange-flower water is an optional addition. You can buy the fragrant distilled flavoring ingredient in small bottles. Or, if you happen to have orange trees in bloom, try infusing them in the hot milk with the saffron. 

If you can get it, use saffron with denominación de origin La Mancha, Spain. (Most saffron, even in Spain, comes from Iran.) Crush the threads of saffron, then infuse them in hot milk before incorporating in the cake batter.

Measure saffron threads.

Measure saffron threads loosely (1/2 teaspoon), then crush them in a mortar or in a small bowl with the butt end of a knife. 

Saffron, Sherry, orange juice.

½ cup milk
½ teaspoon saffron threads, crushed
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
2 ¼ cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 ½ cups sugar
4 medium eggs
1/3 cup dry Sherry
1/3 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon orange flower water (agua azahar) (optional)
Confectioner’s sugar
Orange segments, to serve (optional)
Orange Marmalade Sauce to serve (recipe follows)

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Lightly oil a 9-inch springform pan and line it with baking parchment. 

Place the milk in a microwave-safe cup and heat on medium-high in the microwave for 30 seconds. Add the crushed saffron and orange zest to the hot milk and allow to cool.

Sift together the flour, salt, baking powder and soda.

In a mixing bowl beat together the oil and sugar until light. Beat in the eggs one by one. Beat in the saffron-milk, Sherry, orange juice and orange flower water, if using. 

Fold in the dry ingredients and mix well. 

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a tester comes out clean, 45 to 55 minutes. 

Cool cake before removing from pan.

Set the cake on a rack to cool completely before removing it from the pan. Place it on a platter to serve. Sprinkle the top with confectioner’s sugar. Decorate the cake with orange segments, if desired. Serve sauce alongside.

Orange Marmalade Pouring Sauce
Salsa de Mermelada de Naranja

Easy pouring sauce, for cakes or fruit compote--orange marmalade and cream.

½ cup orange marmalade
2 tablespoons Sherry
½ cup heavy cream

Place the marmelade and Sherry in a saucepan. Heat to melt the marmelade. Add the cream and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and cook until the sauce is reduced by one-quarter, about 5 minutes. 

Allow the sauce to cool before pouring in a small pitcher for serving. 

A different sort of cake with Sherry: Tipsy Cake.

More cakes and cookies with olive oil:

Apple-Almond Olive Oil Crumble.

Quince and Ginger Olive Oil Cake.

Olive Oil Carrot Cake.

Pear Cake with Olive Oil.

Zucchini Chocolate Cake.

Almond Torte.

Crispy Olive Oil Cookies.

Sweet Potato Buns.

Honey-Glazed Buns.

Orange Blossom Sauce.

Happy Birthday, Benjamin. 

THE GAZPACHO DIARIES, WEEK 2

Ripe, juicy tomatoes, best for gazpacho.

It's all about the ingredients! The first gazpacho I made this summer was not up to snuff. It was a hot, hot day, when a body craves the cool tang of a good gazpacho. But, it was desire unfulfilled.

Garlic from the garden.

“The garlic tastes like plastic,” said Ben, my best critic. And so it did. Purchased at the supermarket, it was old and likely shipped from China, probably in plastic crates. A week later I harvested my own garlic, fresh, juicy and pungent.

“And, the tomatoes taste of nothing.” They were pretty tomatoes, big and deep red. But, Ben was right. They were too early, ripened under plastic to ship to northern markets.

Now that we’ve got locally grown tomatoes, I bought several varieties of ripe, red ones to try in gazpacho—plum tomatoes (in Spanish they are tomates pera—pear tomatoes), big beefsteaks, pricey Raf tomatoes. The big, mishapen beefsteak tomatoes, often with discoloration and blemishes, seemed to me to have the right combination of sugar and acid, sweetness and tang. They also had the best texture, but that was of less importance as they would be pureed for gazpacho. The Raf were equally delicious—but best to save for slicing. The plum tomatoes had nothing to offer in flavor, though they had fewer seeds than the other varieties. And the August version of the pretty ones I had used earlier in the season (variety Daniela, widely grown commercially) were as dull as they were before. They are as if stamped from a mold.

Since then, I have been experimenting with each of the ingredients in basic gazpacho (scroll down to last week’s blog to see the basic recipe).

Country bread is best for gazpacho.

Bread. Sturdy country bread made from pale unbleached flour and baked in an horno de leña (wood-fired oven) really is best. But, I absolutely would also use any leftover baguette or roll, once it was one or two days old. In the traditional kitchen, gazpacho was a way to use up stale bread. Soaked in water until softened, the bread is squeezed out and beaten with the olive oil to make a smooth emulsion.

Do you really have to remove the crusts (as I specify in the recipe)? No. Crustless bread makes a more refined gazpacho, but, so what? And, yes, you can substitute good whole wheat bread.

What you shouldn’t use in gazpacho is packaged bread with preservatives and added sugar.

Vary the gazpacho with single varietal olive oils.

Olive oil. It has to be extra virgin. My everyday oil is an extra virgin with a supermarket label (my own olive oil was used up months ago). Like most olive oil from Spain, it is a blend of olive varieties. Either different varieties of olives are all milled together or, with higher quality oil, the olives are milled separately, then a coupage is blended to achieve a balance of flavors.

For the gazpacho experiments, I added different single oil varietals to the same batch of gazpacho. I used Picual, Hojiblanca, Arbequina and Vidueña (which I had never tried before). Picual and Hojiblanca—the most widely grown olives in Andalusia—were very similar (perhaps because they were made by the same cooperative)—pleasantly fruity. The gazpacho with Arbequina oil had a distinctly sweet almond taste while the Vidueña had a bitter edge, not unpleasant with the sweet tomatoes.

Some other time I might try out flavored olive oils—smoked, herb, citric—to give gazpacho another dimension.

Vinegars, from the left, red wine, white wine, PX and Sherry. Plus, unripe grapes and lemon juice.

Vinegar. I also tried out different vinegars as well as lemon juice in another batch of gazpacho. They were white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, Sherry vinegar, Pedro Ximenez Sherry vinegar, lemon juice and verjuice (made from unripe grapes). White wine and red wine vinegar have 6 percent acidity while Sherry vinegar has 7 percent. So, I added less Sherry vinegar to 1 cup of gazpacho. The lemon juice was much less acidic, so the gazpacho needed propotionately more.

Plain white wine vinegar—the most widely used in Spain—was just fine. Fruity and tangy. The Sherry vinegar we liked best for depth of flavor, mellowness as well as acidity. The PX vinegar had a distinctive raisiny-winy taste—not quite compatible with gazpacho. Lemon’s citric acid gave a completely different tang, delicious in a different way. The homemade verjuice was not very satisfactory, maybe not enough of it.

Different peppers for gazpacho.

Peppers, cucumbers, onion. These are all nonessential ingredients, so did not merit extensive trials. The green peppers most used for gazpacho in Andalusia are the skinny, green Italian frying peppers. Their bittersweet flavor and crisp texture are just right as a chopped addition. While red bell pepper is hardly used at all, I must say, it sure looks pretty in a picture!

Salt. It never occurred to me until this minute to try different salts in gazpacho. Next batch.

Water. Cold spring water is best, but not easily come by. I use well water. Rather than chlorinated tap water, use bottled water to dilute the gazpacho. For an interesting variation, try fizzy soda water. Add it immediately before serving, so it doesn’t lose its bubbles.

Which gazpacho is best? Today's gazpacho!