Mess or Success: Making Lemon Olive Oil Cake

I have been DYING to make olive oil cake for years! As someone who watched a little too much Keeping Up With The Kardashians, the olive oil cake they get from Little House Confections always made me curious about what an olive oil cake actually tastes like. My mom, an avid baker and where I learned so much of how I bake, always made cakes with tons of butter, and I never questioned whether cakes could be made with anything else. That's until I started trying to figure out why so many people were obsessed with what sounded like a "savory" cake.

Dozens of articles, recipes, and research later, I looked at three kinds of olive oil cakes and then adapted them to create the recipe I used today. This recipe is for a Lemon Infused Olive Oil Cake, which starts with a typical olive oil cake base but veers off by using lemon extract instead of almond, lemon zest, and lemon juice to really infuse the batter with the aromas and tastes of sugared lemon. I always talk about how I make a recipe multiple times and tweak things before I post it for all of you, but here's is an inside look on that process! Whenever I make something for the first time I try to take a detailed document of all the steps, ingredients, what everything looks like, even get taste testers to test out what I made and what they think I could improve on. This time I happened to have 8 friends over who were more than happy to try it out, and people to help take pictures and videos of the whole process.

I can't wait to share whether this cake was a mess, or a success!

Ingredient List/Special Equipment

Here are the ingredients:

• all purpose flour (Trader Joes brand)

• baking powder (Clabber Girl brand)

• tsp salt

• white sugar (Trader Joes brand)

• extra virgin olive oil (Trader Joes brand)

• large whole egg

• whole milk (generic milk)

• teaspoon vanilla extract (Whole Foods brand)

• lemon extract (Whole Foods brand)

• lemon juice (Trader Joes lemons)

• zest of a lemon (Trader Joes lemon)

Special Equipment:

• 8 1/2 inch circle cake pan

• electric or stand mixer

Step One: Mixing The Batter

I started by whisking the flour, salt, and baking powder together in a small bowl until fully incorporated. I don't personally own a sifter, so to make up for that I rigorously whisk the dry ingredients together to get rid of as many lumps as possible.

Then, I moved on to the wet ingredients. The most important part of this whole process is creaming the eggs and sugar together for AT LEAST a minute before slowly streaming in the olive oil. I've learned that the most mixing should happen at the beginning and not at the end once you add your flour, especially for cakes. Over-mixing the flour will result in a very dense and dry cake, and that can happen regardless of how much moisture or texture components you put into the batter. Streaming the olive oil into the batter is another key moment, and making sure it goes in smooth is going to make or break your cake. Just throwing it all in will result in a separated batter, and you want the olive oil to really emulsify into the eggs and sugar. Same with the milk, add it in slowly and smoothly to keep the batter from breaking.

Now, onto the flavoring: vanilla extract, lemon zest, lemon juice, and lemon extract. I put the mixer on low and added in each component, making sure each was incorporated before adding the next. I knew the batter was going ready because the smell after the lemon extract went in was just divine, and that told me it was flour time. I added the flour in batches, using a wooden spoon to carefully mix the flour into the wet ingredients. I got a little nervous because the batter seemed a bit thin compared to other cakes I've made before, but once all of the dry ingredients were mixed in, the batter came to a consistency that felt right.

It's Oven Time!

The oven was set to 350, and it was as easy as pouring the batter into an 8 1/2 inch cake pan and putting it in the oven for 30-35 minutes. DON'T OPEN THE OVEN DOOR BEFORE THE TIME! Want to avoid your cake deflating in the middle? Keeping the oven door closed until its ready, no matter how tempting it may be! Turn on your oven light and once its done, use a toothpick to check if the center of the cake is done. If you pull out the toothpick and its covered in raw batter than put it back in the oven for an additional 5 minutes. When I took my cake out at 30 minutes it was almost done, so I let it cook for another 5 minutes and it was perfect when it came out.

You want to let the cake cool in the pan for another 5 minutes after its done before taking it out of the pan and onto a plate. When I started getting my ingredients together, I greased the pan with a Pam Baking Release spray with flour in it to make sure the cake came out of the pan once baked. One recipe recommended using parchment paper, but once it was time to get the cake out, I was able to flip the cake over easily onto a plate.

I was a bit anxious to taste the cake so I cut into it about 20 minutes of it cooling down, and it was still a bit warm when I served it. Before serving I dusted the cake with powdered sugar. I don't own a strainer with small enough holes to sift my powdered sugar, so spoonful's at a time had to do for the time being, and no one seemed to mind mountains of powdered sugar on top of their slice. I told myself I would work on presentation once I got the recipe right, so right now it's about flavors, texture, and overall difficulty in the baking process.

My taste testers biggest comment was that it was still warm and that was a really nice touch alongside the flavors of the cake, so I may serve the cake slightly warm in the future. I topped it with powdered sugar, and cut triangle shaped slices for my testers. My taste testers gave me the following notes:

• WOW!

• Tastes like really good cereal? (when you taste it, this comment makes sense)

• Similar to the taste of a lemon drop cookies, without the dry, crumbly texture of lemon drop cookies

• "This is bleeping good"

• "You made this?!"

So seems like the taste testers were big fans of the cake! My review: it was incredibly moist, spongy, had a beautiful lemon aroma, and the flavors were subtle. Not too sweet, light, airy, and the lemon flavor is definitely at the forefront but isn't all you taste either.

It was gone in less than an hour, with everyone eating at least 2 slices and saving me the trouble of having to store a cake piled high with powdered sugar. But if you did need to store the cake, I read its best to leave it covered in plastic wrap at room temp! Next time I make it I'll be sure to wrap it up and see how long it holds before it goes bad.

All in all, I would say this was a HUGE SUCCESS and I'm really over the moon at how deliciously light and airy this cake turned out to be! It was a very simple "make the batter, put in the oven" style cake, with the only difficult part being the actual streaming of the olive oil and making sure it didn't separate the batter. Once that part was over, it was smooth sailing from there.There are lots of olive oil cake recipes out there, and lots of different lemon ones too, but I think the adaptations and ingredients I added to mine created a cake that I would gladly serve or bring to any occasion!

I will posting the official Lemon Infused Olive Oil Cake recipe into my "Recipe Box" soon. I can't wait play around with this more! If you have any requests for recipes that I should try to make, fill out the contact form on my website or DM me on Instagram. Once the recipe with the full instructions and measurements is posted, let me know if you decide to make it and send me pictures of your work!