This cake is fragrant with citrus, beautifully tender thanks to the almond flour and fabulously moist with olive oil. It’s a keeper.
The fatter the batter, the better
If you think of a basic, average cake recipe, you’ll list flour, sugar, eggs and a fat of some sorts. Depending on a recipe, there are usually several options for that last ingredient.
I’m not even going to mention margarine as it deserves no space on a self-respecting recipe blog. Among the remaining cake fats, leaving out suet (because it’s so rarely used these days) and shortening (same as marge, basically), there’s usually the choice between butter and oil.
There are, of course, all kinds of fatless cake, starting with French and Italian biscuit (genoise, pan di spagna), through egg-enriched cakes like tarta di Santiago or angel food, all the way to meringues, macarons and dacquoise. But if you ask a random person which is better in cake baking, butter or oil, they will probably go for butter.
Will they be right? Is an oil-based cake inferior?
Oil vs butter
Either has its place, I’m happy to say. Butter makes cake batter firmer, more stable but also less fluffy. On the other hand it gives it a superior flavour. Oil is not something you want to acutely taste in a cake, even fragrant walnut oil. But it makes cake batter fluffy, soft and moist.
Another plus, and it’s a massive plus for many of us, is that oil cake batter is usually the ‘wet-into-dry’ ingredients mixed in one bowl type, no electric appliances necessary to be involved. Creaming butter with sugar is not a pleasant task even with a standing mixer, then adding eggs one by one only for the whole mix to curdle like crazy. Oil batter won’t do that to you.
But of course we can’t go swapping one for the other at will: I’d advise to stick to the recipe.
Olive oil and white chocolate
This recipe was featured in New York Times Cooking, and it sounded both weird and intriguing. Yoghurt, lemon – so far so ordinary, but olive oil is always a little contentious in cake recipes, especially if they tell you to use extra virgin olive oil.
Don’t: extra virgin olive oil is gorgeous but it belongs in salads. It has a strong flavour that will come through as bitter if used in baking and desserts, in large quantities. Plus, it’s expensive. Good brand mild, non-extra virgin will do very well here.
The other weird ingredient is white chocolate, but it’s not there for the taste but for the extra fat content.
White chocolate, contrary to what some people believe, really is chocolate. It contains cocoa butter which makes it technically thus, even though it doesn’t have any cocoa powder.
High quality white chocolate contains only cocoa butter, with no additions of other vegetable oils, and the cocoa butter content should be at least 20%.
If you have pure cocoa butter in your store cupboard, by all means use it instead of the chocolate.
How to make the cake batter
This gorgeous cake is also easy to make. Starting with chocolate, it’s the easiest to melt it in the microwave in 15 seconds bursts, stirring vigorously after each. It won’t take longer than a minute to melt the recipe amount, and stop when there are still a few tiny lumps. Stirring will smooth it out, and too much microwaving might cause it to split.
The remaining ingredients are simply whisked in one after the other, by hand or with an electric mixer (not really necessary). The oil, the eggs, sugar, yoghurt, lemon zest and juice, and the batter will look more and more like mayonnaise in the making.
The dry ingredients are best stirred all together, to ensure the baking powder and salt are evenly dispersed, and they can be folded in with a spatula, to help scrape the sides.
Baking takes just under an hour, until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool, dust with icing sugar and enjoy a wonderful dessert.
Variations
As you might have guessed, any other citrus can be used in this cake quite successfully.
Blood oranges will make it especially fragrant, and ruby grapefruit will give it a tart tang. White grapefruit might be a little too bitter though.
Plus, of course, ordinary juicy oranges will work.
More lemon cake recipes
Lemon pound cake with lemon syrup drizzle and light icing glaze. Lemon drizzle loaf cake with icing: make drizzle by boiling lemon juice with sugar and the icing by beating a little lemon juice or hot water into icing sugar.
Easy lemon ricotta cake Italian style, a very airy and delicious kind of baked cheesecake. This is an easy recipe to try out.
Lemon cake made with condensed milk. This lemon butter cake is soft and spongy, what some people call ‘a wet cake’ in the best possible meaning. The lemon zest gives it a fantastic flavour.
More lemon flavoured desserts
Pistachio lemon shortbread bars, with nutty shortcrust base and tangy lemon topping filled with more pistachios. Those New York Times recipe inspired bars or slices are easy to make, and easier to eat.
Mascarpone sorbet with lemon flavour inspired by a River Café recipe is smooth, creamy and unbelievably refreshing. This is a no-churn recipe.
Traditional lemon posset is a fabulous English dessert which originates from a spiced milky medieval drink. It can be prepared in 15 minutes, from only 3 ingredients: double cream, sugar and lemon juice.