Olive Oil Cake with Chocolate and Rosemary
For years, I dreamt of working at the famed La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles under Nancy Silverton. Her pastries, while appearing quite simple and straightforward, were nuanced compositions with multiple layers of flavor and technique. That dream was realized when Nancy hired me away from my Spago to work as the Pastry Chef at Campanile, where the La Brea Bakery was born. Once I began working there, I came to enjoy one of my favorite benefits -- leftover pastries!
Every day after the bakery counter closed, we were welcome to take home any of the breads and pastries that we would like. I took a wide variety of them in order to “learn” (wink-wink) the flavor of each as well as how dark the bake should or shouldn’t be. And while I'm a fan of just about everything that Nancy developed, a few stood out, especially, the Canelé, the loaf of bread made with dried fruit and nuts, and, especially, the Olive Oil Cake.
Baked in small tins for a higher crust-to-crumb ratio, the Olive OIl Cakes were scented with freshly grated orange zest and made with an extravagant amount of bright, sharp, fruity olive oil. It’s hard to stop after just one., because the cake is only slightly sweet and has a wondrous chew and luxurious mouthfeel.
While I was writing Good to the Grain, I knew that I wanted to include an Olive Oil Cake, but it was hard to create a new version when I found the original to be near-perfect. A bit of free association while strolling through my Los Angeles neighborhood, however, got me thinking about where the olives are grown - Italy - and that got me in turn to consider rosemary. Conveniently, rosemary was growing in prolific bushes right outside my back door, and it was easy enough to walk outside, clip off a few stems, chop them finely and stir them into the batter. The aromatic menthol herb blended with the silky, satin olive oil was a natural and beautiful match. By adding a few cupfuls of spelt flour -- a sweet, more mild version of whole wheat flour that creates a soft and tender crumb -- and tossing in a handful of chopped, dark, bitter chocolate, I had found a version of the olive oil cake that I liked just as much if not more than the cake which inspired it.
Recently, I was reminded of Olive Oil Cake through the kindness of one of our bakers when she made her favorite olive oil cake recipe for one of her co-workers. My mind drifted through the previous versions of this cake, and I decided to make my Olive Oil Cake for our Secret Item this weekend!
We are making an Olive Oil Cake with chocolate and rosemary, in a pretty 8-inch round Italian paper mold, and sending them out with delicious olive oil whipped cream for you to dollop on top! Available to our newsletter subscribers only, so be sure to join our email list for access to all future Secret Newsletter Items.
We hope you enjoy it!
PS - You might want to consider enjoying this cake with one of the new wines we just added to our online web-store: the fruit-forward Italian Friulano white from Sirk, or the refreshing sparkling red Lambrusco from Chiarli, or maybe even the racy pink Txakolina rosé from Ameztoi in Spain!