Olive Oil and Citrus Cake

The stars of today's sponge cake are citrus and olive oil. This lemon, orange and oil cake pays tribute to the Provence region. It turns out to be a very airy and light sponge cake, while at the same time very tasty, intense and juicy, releasing a delicious aroma of olive oil and the citrus touch of the syrup with which we brush it.

To prepare the cake there are two important things to keep in mind: first, incorporate a lot of air in the initial steps, when beating the egg. Second, bake in a ceramic tray or pan: ceramic trays, like the Le Creuset one we use today, are made of a humid material and help produce moist and fluffy cakes (they don't dry out the batter like other materials, which is the last thing you want in a cake).

Ingredients

• 4 XL eggs
• 240 g sugar
• 3 oranges
• 3 lemons
• 275 ml olive oil
• 300 g ground almonds
• 150 g self-raising flour*
• A pinch of sea salt
• 1 sprig rosemary, leaves removed and finely chopped
• 1 tbsp butter for greasing

*Instead of self-raising flour, you can use 142 g plain flour and 8 or 10 g baking powder.

For the glaze:

• 30 ml hot lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• Icing sugar for dusting

Heritage Le Creuset ceramic tray and Le Creuset French press

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 180 ºC, fan off, top and bottom heat.
2. Crack the eggs lightly and put them in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the sugar and turn the mixer on to 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 fruits. Also reserve the juice.
4. In a large bowl or jug, mix the oil, the juices and the orange and lemon zests. When the eggs are fluffy, add that liquid mixture in a thin stream, little by little, without stopping beating. Be careful in this part of the process, so the eggs don't break/separate.
5. In another bowl or using the KitchenAid sifter, sift the self-raising flour with the salt and the ground almonds. Add the chopped rosemary to that mixture.
6. In the mixer, change the whisk attachment for the paddle attachment, and gradually incorporate the flour mixture into the egg and oil mixture. Mix well until you achieve a homogeneous, light and fluffy batter.
7. Let's prepare the pan Grease the Heritage tray from Le Creuset with butter. Pour the batter into the pan and make sure it is evenly distributed.
8. With a sharp knife or using a mandoline, cut the lemon and orange into thin slices, and place them carefully on the surface of the batter, making sure they don't sink into it.
9. Place in the oven, on the lower third rack, and bake for 1–1 hour and 15 minutes, until golden and a knife inserted comes out clean.
10. Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack or on a wooden board, to avoid thermal shocks.
11. Carefully and helped by a skewer, make two or four holes in the top of the cake to help the syrup penetrate the batter.
12. Let's prepare the glaze: in a saucepan, heat the lemon juice over low heat (you can also do this in a bowl in the microwave) and stir with the sugar until dissolved.
13. Using a pastry brush, carefully brush (but soaking the skewer well) the top of the cake with the syrup glaze.
14. Serve once everything has cooled, cake and syrup. You can serve with a little icing sugar on top.

***** Things you may be interested in *****

• The cake is best served on the same Le Creuset ceramic tray (aside from being beautiful to bring to the table you can cut directly on it since 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 pull the paper to lift the cake out).

• To squeeze the lemons and oranges, you can use an electric juicer, or you can use the manual juicer. With it you'll get every last drop and it works brilliantly.

• In summer, you can serve the cake with crème fraîche with orange zest. You'll look like royalty to your guests!

• You can also make the cake using canned peaches in syrup instead of citrus for the decoration on top of the cake. If you do so, then use the syrup they're packed in to brush the cake in the final steps before serving.

Heritage Le Creuset ceramic tray