Olive oil and citrus cake

The protagonists of today's cake are citrus fruits and olive oil. This lemon, orange and oil cake pays homage to the Provence region. The result is a very airy and light cake, as well as very tasty, intense and juicy, from which a delicious aroma of olive oil and the citric touch of the syrup we brush it with emerges.

To prepare the cake there are two important things to take into account: first, provide a lot of air in the first steps, when beating the egg. The second thing is to bake in a ceramic tray or mold : ceramic trays, such as the one from Le Creuset that we use today, are made of moist material and contribute to obtaining moist and spongy biscuits (they do not dry out the dough like other materials, which are of no interest at all). in a cake).

Ingredients

• 4 XL eggs
• 240g of sugar
• 3 oranges
• 3 lemons
• 275ml olive oil
• 300 g of chopped almonds
• 150 g self-rising flour*
• a pinch of sea salt
• 1 rosemary sprig, leaves torn off and finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon of butter to grease

*Instead of self-rising flour, you can use 142 gr of pastry flour, and 8 or 10 gr of chemical yeast.

For the glaze:

• 30 ml lemon juice, warm
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• Icing sugar to decorate

Heritage Le Creuset ceramic tray and Le Creuset press coffee maker

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC, without air, heat up and down.
2. Crack the eggs slightly and put them in the bowl of a food processor . Add the sugar and turn on the robot at medium speed, until you have a white, dense and fluffy mixture (after 4-5 minutes of mixing).
3. Grate the peel of two oranges and two lemons, reserve the zest, and squeeze the 4 pieces. Also reserve the juice.
4. In a large bowl or pitcher, mix the oil, juices, and orange and lemon zest. When the eggs are fluffy, add that liquid mixture in a thread, little by little, without stopping beating. Be careful in this part of the process, that the eggs do not separate.
5. In another bowl or using the KitchenAid sieve, sift the self-raising flour, with the salt and ground almonds. Add the chopped rosemary to that mixture.
6. In the robot, change the balloon whisk for the mixing paddle, and see incorporating the flour mixture into the mixture of eggs and oil. Mix well until you get a homogeneous, light and fluffy mixture.
7. Let's prepare the mold Grease the Le Creuset Heritage tray with butter. Add the mixture to the mold and make sure it is well distributed.
8. With a sharp knife or with the help of a mandolin, cut the lemon and orange into thin slices, and carefully place them on the surface of the dough, making sure they do not sink into it.
9. Place in the oven, one third high, and bake for 1–1 hour and 15 minutes, until golden brown and a knife inserted in comes out clean.
10. Remove from the oven and let cool on a cooling rack or on a wooden board, to avoid thermal shocks.
11. Carefully and with the help of a skewer, poke two or four holes into the top of the cake to help the syrup penetrate the dough.
12. Let's prepare the glaze: in a saucepan, heat the lemon juice over low heat (you can also do it in a bowl in the microwave) and stir with the sugar until dissolved.
13. Using a pastry brush, carefully brush (but soak the skewer well) the top of the cake with the syrup glaze.
14. Serve when everything has cooled, cake and syrup. You can serve with a little icing sugar on top.

***** Things that may interest you *****

• The cake is best served on the same Le Creuset ceramic tray (besides being beautiful to bring to the table, you can cut directly on it so you won't scratch it). But if you want to remove the cake from the tray, what you should do is line the tray with baking paper (so you don't need to brush the tray), leaving extra paper on the sides (so you can throw the paper to remove the cake ).

• To juice the lemons and oranges, you can use an electric juicer, or you can use the manual juicer . With it you will get every last drop and it goes perfectly.

• In summer, you can serve the cake with a crème fraîche with orange zest. You will look like a king before your guests!

• You can also make the cake using peach in syrup instead of citrus for decoration on top of the cake. If you do it like this, then use the same syrup in which they are wrapped to brush the cake in the last steps before serving.

Heritage Le Creuset ceramic tray