Olive Oil Cake with Blood Orange

Butter cakes are a performance. There is a temperature the butter has to be at, a stage the creaming has to reach, and a window in which the eggs will go in without splitting. Olive oil cake asks for none of that. The fat is already liquid, so the batter comes together in one bowl with a whisk and cannot really be broken.

What you get in exchange is a cake with a much longer life. Oil stays soft at room temperature where butter sets hard, which is why this is still good on Thursday when a sponge made on Monday is a coaster.

Choosing the oil

This is the whole decision. The oil is not a shortening here, it is the dominant flavour, and it will be more obvious in the finished cake than it is in the bottle. A grassy, peppery Tuscan oil makes a cake with a savoury edge that I like very much. A softer, rounder Spanish or Greek oil makes a gentler one.

What you cannot do is use something anonymous and hope the sugar covers it. It does not.

The two minutes of whisking

Sugar and eggs, whisked until they visibly thicken and lighten. This is the only aeration the cake gets — there is no creamed butter holding air — and skipping it gives you something dense and slightly greasy. Two minutes by hand is enough, and it is worth setting a timer, because it is longer than it feels.

Citrus, and where to put it

Zest goes in the batter, where the oils in it dissolve into the fat and reach every crumb. Juice goes in too, but only one orange’s worth: more and the acid starts fighting the baking powder.

The slices on top are not decoration so much as insurance. They keep the surface from drying while the middle finishes, and the demerara over them turns to a thin, cracking caramel.

Serving it

Plain, with coffee, standing up in the kitchen. Or with a spoonful of thick yogurt and nothing else. If you want something to drink beside it in the evening, it is very good with a small glass of something bitter.