Olive Oil Cake for Your Sunday Afternoon Foodie Fix

Long time no cakes. Or better said, not good enough and photo-suited cakes, as I did have my own portion of (big) baking fail in the last two months. Apparently, my big mistke was to have used Aluminium foil pan, which involves a very crusty upper part and an unpleasant raw bottom. When you offer yourself to bring your friends their favorite honey cake, such an episode is really annoying, but what are friends for if not for forgetting your baking fails (too). Today, I was bold enough to start a new baking adventure. 

For a couple of weeks I've read about a famous chocolate olive oil cake by Nigella Lawson, and kept thinking over and over again. Even had once a wake dream about preparing my own hot cocoa with a dash of olive oil but was lazy and not adventurous enough to try. Today, I went even further and made up completely an olive oil non-chocolate cake. Because this is how usually I work in the kitchen: I am either too shy to boil an egg or bold enough to dare and succeed making from scratch a delicious  heimishe kokosh cake.

The ingredients I used suited a 25-cm diameter Aluminium pan.
Ingredients
2 cups white flour
25 gr. baking powder
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup lemon zest
1 medium size egg
1/2 cup orange blossom
1 pinch of kosher or sea salt
1 cup desiccated coconut
Directions
While you are preparing the batter, warm the oven at 250 C.

Add the sugar, olive oil, egg, lemon zest and egg and mix well. Pour the white flour, little by little and mix well. Continue pouring the orange blossom and the salt. Mix well. If needed, add a little bit of warm water to help the batter mix better and be more fluid - just a little bit, as you don't wait it watery. 

Pour the content in the pan. Add the desiccated coconut as decoration.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Baking time: 45 minutes to one hour, depends of how smart your oven is. 

Serves: 7

You can have this cake with a cuppa of English tea, or a lemonade, or a black coffee. 

Bon Appétit!

Recipe of the week: Moroccan orange cake

I did not achieve too many foodie successes lately and the baby took most of my energy and creativity. For the meals, I kept doing the same recipes over and over again every Shabbat. But at least I kept reading about tasty recipes and once in a while I introduced some new meals on the menu.

For instance, the orange Moroccan cake, which is very easy to make, using simple ingredients and can match various meals. It is parve and can be done in around 45 minutes, out of which the baking lasts 30 minutes. 

It serves around 10 people

Ingredients

4 big eggs

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 spoon vanilla sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 cups floor

4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup of fresh orange juice - if you want it more spongy

Directions

Mix the eggs and the sugar and vanilla sugar

Add the oil and keep mixing

Mix in the flour with the baking powder, followed by the salt and orange juice.

Heat the oven at 180C

Let the mixture in the oven for 30 minutes.

Bon Appetit!