Orange olive oil cake

My baking focus during these self isolation/shelter-in-place days has revolved around ingredients on hand that I’d like to use up or at least pare down - white whole wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, potato flour, semolina, rolled oats, coconut milk, coconut chips, a lime, rum, almond paste, dried cranberries, sesame seeds, chocolate batons, oranges/zest just to name a few.

So far I’ve made chocolate pistachio swirls (stay tuned), coconut pound cake with coconut ice cream (coming up soon), Danish dough destined for almond Kringle (I’ll write about that too), chocolate chunk cookies (whole wheat pastry flour), white whole wheat sandwich bread, cranberry-walnut whole grain bread & rolls (oats, whole wheat flour, sesame seeds), potato dinner rolls (potato flour) and pizza dough (white whole wheat, semolina). Who knows what else I’ll be getting myself into.

Boy oh boy. We, our neighbors and our freezer are all the better for it!

On to the task at hand. Some months ago I purchased Food52’s “Genius Desserts” - chock full of tempting treats, wonderful inspiration and so many recipes to try. This orange olive oil cake is one of them. Credited to NYC restaurant Maialino, part of the Union Square Hospitality Group owned by Danny Meyer (now hit hard by COVID-19 like so many others), the cake was developed by a former pastry chef there, Rachel Binder. The link I’ve given you takes you to the current recipe for said cake by the present pastry chef, Geoffrey Koo - very much like the one printed in “Genius Desserts” with a few tweaks in ingredient portions.

Described as having “a crackling crust” and a center that is close to pudding-like, it’s an easy one to put together. Buuuuutttt . . . . . first let’s take a quick detour.

I’ve been meaning to tell you about a local business here in Grand Rapids. It’s called Long Road Distillers and boy do they make some good stuff. They’ve got award winning spirits and plenty of inventive cocktails (usually available at their retail/restaurant space until the current crisis), but we particularly enjoy their amaro and liqueurs. We even took several bottles to the UK as hostess gifts last fall.

They’re available from a number of wine and spirits vendors around town, plus Long Road is offering online ordering/pickup now as well. And to top it all off we recently learned that they’re now contributing to the COVID fight and making hand sanitizer - how cool is that??!!

The Michigan fruit liqueurs are great in Swiss meringue butter cream and basic crème pâtissiére, or joined with vanilla extract in fruity cakes or blended into crème d’amandes for a baked almond fruit tart or cherry-berry version of croissant aux amandes.

The Amaro Pazzo (pazzo means crazy in Italian) is a wonderful coffee essence’d digestif made with Madcap Coffee, another local GR company. And the green walnut Nocino is superb. Hmmm . . . . how about those in buttercream too? Add it to the to-do list!

Time for cake.

The recipe calls for Grand Marnier or Cointreau, well known orange liqueurs, but I had neither on hand so decided to use Long Road’s raspberry just because I could.

I’ve been eating a lot of oranges lately and, since I don’t like to waste any citrus, I zest them before sectioning and store the zest packets in my freezer - et voilà, I have orange zest at the ready. Needless to say I have a LOT of orange zest on hand.

I’m giving you the recipe as presented in “Genius Desserts” but you can also click on the Maialino link above for the current recipe.

Heat your oven to 350ºF. Butter a 9-inch round, 2-inch deep cake pan, and line the bottom with a round of parchment.

Do your mise and have a medium bowl and a medium-large one on hand. You’ll blend dry ingredients in one and wet in the other.

Dry: In a medium bowl blend 260 g / 2 cups all purpose flour (feel free to sub in 50-60 g or so as whole wheat pastry flour); 350 g / 1.75 cups sugar; 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt; 1/2 teaspoon baking soda; 1/2 teaspoon baking powder.

Wet: In a medium-large bowl blend 285 g / 1.33 cups extra virgin olive oil; 300 g / 1.25 cups whole milk; 3 large eggs; 1.5-2 tablespoons orange zest (the more the merrier I always say); 60 g / 1/4 cup freshly squeezed OJ; 1/4 cup liqueur such as Grand Marnier or Cointreau - I used Long Road’s raspberry liqueuer instead.

Now blend the dry ingredients into the wet, and scrape into the prepared pan.

Note: My springform seemed a tad askew (I’ve had it a long time), and I could see light coming through along one of the bottom edges. Since this is a pretty wet batter, I wrapped foil around the outside of my pan to insure against leakage. It worked.

Bake about an hour until the top is golden, the center set and you have a dry or few crumb-ed tester poked in the middle. I baked mine 10-15 minutes longer than suggested since I could still see a bit of gooey-ness in the top cracks until finally I achieved the tester result I wanted. Moist is good, gooey and under baked isn’t.

Cool in the pan about 20-30 minutes then un-mold and cool completely.

Once sliced, the moist nearly pudding like center is clearly appreciated, making one harbor some concern as to whether it baked long enough. But do not fear - all is well.

For our initial taste test, I sliced a couple of thin portions to try au naturel. With a tender yet dense crumb, the olive oil and lovely hint of orange offer a completely different experience than a basic butter-made cake. The flavor is hard to describe - at first one questions its uniqueness, but then it starts to grow on you and becomes almost ethereal.

Next I accompanied it with lightly sweetened whipped cream and some fresh berries. What a delicious combo! I must admit that the raspberry liqueur didn’t provide that particular essence to the cake but that’s OK. Come to think of it, I could have drizzled some over the berries and cream!! Duh. Next time.

Of course Steve and I have to ask ourselves “what are we going to do with all of this?”. Well, as it turns out, we were experiencing a particularly beautiful day and some of our neighbors had social distanced themselves into lawn chairs out in the street. At another appropriate distance we set up a small table and brought out a tray of individual servings of cake with berries and cream for all to enjoy. Each person could approach safely, pick up their own and head back to their chair. What a great way to share!

As always, stay home, stay safe, stay healthy.