Have you ever gone to a restaurant fully planning to eat some healthy, tasty food, but when you get to the end of the meal there is the most ridiculously decadent dessert menu? And you hem and haw and you think “well, I COULD just get this salad, but what if I got this salad AND this very tiny, insignificant carrot cupcake with two inches of cream cheese frosting!” (I tend to go with Option B if it’s presented to me.)
There’s this great local restaurant in the area that offers a healthy menu with lots of tasty, local offerings. It’s full of salads and a filling soup and several meat options, but when you get to the end of the line to pay there is a STACKED case of goodies. One of the most delicious is a tantalizing brown round which looks plain, but is really one of the most ridiculously tasty Citrus Olive Oil cakes ever. It seems like I’m not the only person who noticed- for the last couple months every time I tried to search for a similar recipe I came up with several people wondering if they could learn the secret too. Since it was so elusive, I’m been working on my own version, but (out of NOWHERE) when I searched a few days ago it turned out the LA Times was able to get the recipe!
The recipe is pretty unique and differs from several of the other Citrus Olive Oil Cake recipes I’ve seen. But since I’d already experimented with ingredients and flavors, I tried a couple modifications that I thought would make the cake perfect for me. First: since I had already discovered that I loved the flavor of orange juice in these cakes, I knew I’d have to play with the sugar to get it just right. Second: whole milk is delicious, but I’m going to be real here: how often do I have whole milk in my fridge? RARELY. It was an easy step to substitute the whole milk with some almond milk, but feel free to use whatever you have on hand! Since the olive oil flavor is the star in the cake, you can’t go wrong.
- 2 room temperature eggs
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup orange juice
- 1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk
- 1 cup good quality olive oil
- 1 teaspoon orange zest
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- few tablespoons of powdered sugar
- Heat oven to 350 degrees.
- Beat eggs and sugar together with a mixer until thick, about 4 minutes.
- In a separate bowl, combine the orange juice, almond milk, olive oil and orange zest. With the mixer running, slowly add to the egg mixture, blending well.
- Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a third bowl. Once combined, slowly add the dry ingredients to the egg and olive oil mixture, scraping down the bowl while mixing to make sure the dry ingredients are fully incorporated.
- Pour batter into an olive oil greased round cake pan. Bake the cake for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Cool cake and use a sieve to dust with powdered sugar before serving.
- Check out the original recipe's baking instructions if you'd like to make small cupcake sizes! This is one of the best ways to enjoy them since there is more of the special, crispy shell to go around.
