The protagonists of today's sponge 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 sponge cake, as well as very tasty, intense and juicy, from which a delicious aroma of olive oil and the citrus touch of the syrup with which we brush it emerges.

To prepare the sponge cake, there are two important things to keep in mind: first, add 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, like 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 does not matter at all). in a biscuit).

Ingredients

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

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

For the glaze:

• 30 ml lemon juice, hot
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• icing sugar to decorate

Le Creuset Heritage Ceramic Tray and Le Creuset Press Coffee Maker

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 180 ºC, without air, heat up and down.
2. Crack the eggs lightly and put them in the bowl of a food processor . Add the sugar and turn on the mixer at medium speed, until you have a white, dense and fluffy mixture (after 4-5 minutes of mixing).
3. Zest 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 jug, mix the oil, the juices and the 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 sifter, sift the self-rising flour, salt and ground almonds. Add the chopped rosemary to that mixture.
6. In the robot, change the balloon whisk for the mixing paddle, and add the flour mixture to the egg and oil mixture. Mix well until you get a homogeneous, light and fluffy mixture.
7. Let's prepare the pan Grease the Le Creuset Heritage pan with butter. Add the mixture to the mold and ensure that 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 that they do not sink into it.
9. Place in the oven, a third of the way up, and bake for 1–1 hour and 15 minutes, until golden brown and a knife inserted comes out clean.
10. Take out of 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, make two or four holes in 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 thoroughly soak the skewer) the top of the cake with the syrup icing.
14. Serve when 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 (apart from being beautiful to take 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 have to do is line the tray with baking paper (it is not necessary to brush the tray), leaving excess paper on the sides (so you can throw the paper to remove the cake ).

• To squeeze lemons and oranges, you can use an electric juicer, or you can use a manual juicer . With him you will get to the last drop and it goes from pearls.

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

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

Le Creuset Heritage Ceramic Tray