Olive oil cake is a one-bowl cake: whisk eggs into olive oil until creamy, add milk and citrus, fold in the dry ingredients, and bake an 8-inch round at 350°F for 35–40 minutes. In this version a jar of Meyer lemon marmalade supplies the citrus in the batter and the shine on top.
America's best-known oil cake is a different animal. PBS Food traces the chiffon cake to Harry Baker, a Los Angeles insurance salesman and caterer who started tinkering with angel food cake in 1923 and reportedly tested more than 400 recipes before landing on vegetable oil, then called salad oil. He baked it for guests of the Brown Derby from 1928 and later sold the recipe to General Mills, which put out a Betty Crocker pamphlet with 14 variations. Olive oil cake shares the principle, liquid oil in place of creamed butter, but not the pedigree.
Why put marmalade in the batter?
The usual citrus in olive oil cake is grated zest and a splash of juice. King Arthur's Everyday Olive Oil Cake, the base for the version below, uses the zest of one orange and ¼ cup of its juice.
Marmalade brings that peel already cooked in sugar. Other bakers have put it straight into olive oil batter. Australian Women's Weekly's olive oil and marmalade cake starts by beating a full cup of marmalade with ¾ cup of olive oil until pale, then adds eggs, ground almonds and flour. Chef Traci Des Jardins goes further in her Meyer lemon olive oil cake for Food Network: she simmers two whole Meyer lemons, purées them without the seeds, and folds the pulp into the batter.
The ingredient list on our Meyer Lemon Marmalade runs to three items: cane sugar, Riverside-grown Meyer lemons, water. Meyers carry mandarin in their parentage and are sweeter than a standard lemon, which suits a cake that shouldn't taste sharp.
The swap, line by line
| King Arthur's original | This version | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Zest of 1 orange | ⅓ cup (80 ml) Meyer Lemon Marmalade, shreds longer than ½ inch chopped | Cooked peel tastes softer and more floral than raw zest; chopping spreads it evenly |
| 1 cup (198 g) sugar | ¾ cup (150 g) sugar | The marmalade brings sugar of its own; the ¼-cup cut is our adjustment, not King Arthur's |
| Plain top or powdered sugar | 3 tbsp marmalade, warmed and brushed on the warm cake | A thin, shiny glaze with a little bitterness from the peel |
Olive oil cake recipe
Adapted from King Arthur Baking's Everyday Olive Oil Cake.
Yield: One 8-inch cake, 8–10 slices · Prep: 15 minutes · Bake: 35–40 minutes · Total: about 1 hour 25 minutes, with cooling
Ingredients
Cake - 1¼ cups (150 g) all-purpose flour - ¾ cup (150 g) granulated sugar - ½ tsp baking powder - ½ tsp baking soda - Rounded ½ tsp table salt - 2 large eggs - ½ cup (100 g) extra-virgin olive oil - ¾ cup (170 g) milk - ⅓ cup (80 ml) Meyer lemon marmalade, chopped if the shreds are long - ¼ cup (57 g) fresh Meyer lemon or orange juice - 1 tsp vanilla extract
Glaze - 3 tbsp Meyer lemon marmalade - 1 tbsp (15 ml) lemon juice or water
Steps
- Put a rack in the center of the oven and preheat it to 350°F (175°C).
- Grease an 8-inch (20 cm) round cake pan lightly and line the bottom with a round of parchment.
- Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl.
- In a larger bowl, whisk the eggs and olive oil hard until they emulsify and look creamy and yellow.
- Whisk in the milk, marmalade, juice and vanilla.
- Add the dry ingredients gradually, whisking until the batter is smooth.
- Pour the batter into the pan and bake 35–40 minutes; it's done when the top is golden and a toothpick in the center comes out clean.
- Cool the cake in the pan on a rack for 30 minutes.
- Meanwhile, warm the glaze marmalade and lemon juice in a small pan over low heat until loose and just bubbling.
- Run a spatula around the edge of the pan, turn the cake out, and set it right side up on the rack.
- Brush the warm glaze over the top of the still-warm cake, then let it cool completely.
Notes
- Choosing the oil. King Arthur recommends a fresh-tasting, fruity olive oil rather than one that's assertively grassy or bitter. We'd keep a peppery finishing oil for bread; it competes with the marmalade.
- Storage. King Arthur says to keep the cake well wrapped at room temperature for up to 4 days, and that it gets moister as it sits. The glaze stays tacky, so wrap it loosely or keep it under a cake dome.
- Other marmalades. Orange marmalade gives a result closer to the original orange cake. A bitter grapefruit marmalade is a gamble in a cake this plain, since there's little else to balance the peel.
- The classic orange version. Follow King Arthur's recipe as written: 1 cup (198 g) sugar, the zest of 1 orange and ¼ cup (57 g) orange juice, with everything else the same, and skip the glaze or dust the cooled cake with powdered sugar. King Arthur also suggests lemon or grapefruit zest and juice in place of the orange, which is the easy route if you'd rather grate your own Meyer lemons.
How finely the peel is cut changes how a marmalade behaves in a batter; we cover cut, along with clarity and color, in the four Cs of great marmalade. Other jars for baking are in our marmalade collection.
Photo by enrico bet on Unsplash.
