Slip sliding away: olive oil and sweet wine cake

Are you all ready for the end and the beginning, ragazzi?   Annalena here is certainly ready for the end, and not sure about the beginning.  She has a whole list of things that she needs to start doing , and end doing, comes 2013.  Either breathe a sigh of relief or groan in disappointment, the blog shall stay.  But one very well may see more tales, more healthy recipes, and so forth.

We shall not be going the healthy route today, bambini.  No, we are going to make a very easy cake, but one which will intrigue both you and your guests.

There is a large family of cakes, mostly from Italy and France, based on the use of olive oil as a fat, rather than butter.  And why not?  If the fat you have at hand is olive oil, and butter is too dear, well... Indeed, let us keep in mind that some of our favorite cakes - carrot, for example, are based on oil.  Undoubtedly somewhere, there is a cake based on duck fat, or goose fat.  Annalena, as the song goes "don't want to know."

Well, in exploring this repertoire, Annalena was looking for easy, complex and tasty.  Sort of like the way she likes her men.  Sort of.    This one won the competition.  Except she changed it.  See, the recipe did NOT call for sweet wine, which for Annalena was essential. So she changed the dry white to a sweet white. 

There is a subset of these olive oil cakes that are very much like fallen souffle cakes. This one is not like that.  And that's a good thing if you want to make this ahead of time.  What is also good about it, is that you don't need the food processor.  Nope, you can do this all in a bowl, using your hands.  You really can.

Here we go.  First, let's sift together about a cup and a half of all purpose flour, a quarter cup of cornmeal, 2 teaspoons of baking soda, and a big pinch of salt.  The cornmeal really adds to the color and texture of the cake.  Please do not leave it out.

Put that aside, and mix together a cup of sugar, and the zest of half an orange, and half a lemon  (use a full fruit of one if you prefer).  And now... chop up a teaspoon of rosemary, real fine.  Remember that you'll be adding a minty kind of back note to the cake, and you wont mind it.  Get this all together, and get your fingers in there, and rub things together to release the oils.  All of citrus peel, and rosemary, are loaded with oil.  They will flavor your sugar nicely. 

Let's start having fun now.  Make sure that sugar mixture is in a large bowl.  Start adding a half cup of olive oil.  Extra virgin? Sure.  Virgin?  Also fine.  "Pure". NO.  Absolutely not.  Think about the oil you use before you pour it in.  Those super tuscan peppery green ones that burn the back of your mouth are NOT the right choice.  You want something that's,well, "buttery."  Something that you would cook with, but wouldn't use to dress your vegetables.  Annalena used her McEvoy extra virgin, leaving her olio nuovo for another use.    Whisk this up.  You will get something resembling wet sand and begin to worry.  Pazienza.    Start mixing in two large eggs, and ... now you'll have eggy wet sand.  Worry not, because now, you're going to add half a cup of a sweet wine.  Annalena has seen this done with sauterne, with baume de Venise, and others.  She used a late harvest gewurztraminer from California that had oxidized a bit.    Use what you have.

NOW, you'll have something beginning to resemble cake batter.  And into that, stir your flour mixture.  Get this into a parchment paper lined, oiled 8 or 9 inch  cake pan, and get it into a 350 oven, for 30 - 40 minutes.

It browns up nicely, and has a beautiful crumb.  And since you have half the zest of two fruit left, why don't you make two?  It certainly didn't take you long.

There are olive oil ice creams out there, for the intrepid.  Forse....