Olive Oil Cake
A deliciously moist simple yet flavoursome cake which improves with keeping. I have included a couple of flavour options - both zingy and delicious.
Serves 11-12
Ingredients
You will need a 9 inch/23 cm cake tin brushed with lining paste. The lemon and orange cake batter is quite thin so avoid a cake tin with a loose bottom.
For the Cake
3 large eggs
180g Caster sugar
100ml Olive oil – I used the cheapest and not extra virgin or you can use vegetable, sunflower or rapeseed oil
Finely grated zest plus the juice of 1/2 large orange
100ml Whole milk
250g Self Raising flour
1 tsp ground ginger
60g Preserved ginger in syrup (3 pieces)
(For an “Orange and Lemon Cake” use the zest and juice of two lemons and one orange – reserving juice from half of one fruit for the icing. Omit the ground and preserved ginger from the cake and the icing)
For the topping
Juice and finely grated zest of half a large orange
6 tbsp icing sugar or sufficient to make a thick runny icing
¼ tsp ground ginger (omit the ginger if making the orange and lemon cake)
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Preparation
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees c (fan)
For the Ginger and Orange Cake only – Start by preparing the preserved ginger. Rinse the three pieces under a running tap to remove the sticky syrup. Dry on kitchen paper then cut into tiny dice about the size of currants. Set aside in a separate small bowl and add a tablespoon of flour from the measured 250g to be used in the cake. Stir the ginger pieces around in the flour so that they are well coated then set aside. Prepping the ginger in this way will prevent it dropping to the bottom of the cake during baking.
In a roomy mixing bowl whisk together the eggs and the caster sugar until the mixture becomes pale and doubled in size. Whisk in then the oil. Using a large metal spoon then fold in the flour (which is sifted with the ginger if using) and keep mixing until the mixture thickens and the flour is well combined. Finally fold through the milk and the flavours – prepped ginger and zest or zest and juice of the orange and lemons then transfer to the prepared tin.
Bake for 40-45 minutes until the cake is risen, golden and firm to the touch.
Leave to cool in the tin on a cooling rack.
To make the water icing simply place the juice, zest and optional ginger in a small bowl then keep adding icing sugar, little by little, stirring well between each addition until you achieve a thick consistency. Once the cake is completely cold drizzle over the water icing and once set cut into slices and enjoy !
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