Description
This blood orange olive oil cake is easy to make using essential pantry ingredients. This cake has a perfectly balanced flavor with a nice citrus taste. In the recipe notes, I provide other citrus fruit options if you do not find blood oranges. I recommend using a good quality olive oil. Check the recommendations in the blog post
Ingredients
Units
Scale
Ingredients for Cake
- Greased and floured (or lined with parchment paper) loaf pan
- 3 (separated into segments, juice and zest) blood oranges
- 1 + 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 + 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon Greek Natural Sea Salt
- 2/3 cup (little less) plain Greek yogurt
- 2 large eggs
- 2/3 cup Melies Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 1/3 cup raisins
Ingredients for Compote (optional)
- 2 Tablespoons Trea Greek Wildflower Honey
- 3 Blood oranges. Supreme to get the segments and the juices.
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease your loaf pan. Then line with parchment paper with two wings.
- Grate the zest of three blood oranges and place it in the bowl with the sugar. Using your fingers, rub the zest and the sugar together until it's well incorporated. Set aside.
- Supreme two of the blood oranges. Instructions are in the blog post above. Set aside the segments.
- Squeeze the juice: With what is left from each blood orange, squeeze and try to get some juice out. Put the juice in a measuring cup; it will be about 1/4 cup. If you need more juice to reach 1/4 cup, squeeze another half of a blood orange. The idea amount is 1/4 cup, but if you get 1/3 cup, it's ok too. If you still have more juice, set it aside for the blood orange honey compote.
- Add the Greek yogurt to the measuring cup with the juice, until you have 2/3 cup. Combine.
- Whisk the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt) in a large bowl. Set aside.
- Combine the sugar mixture and the yogurt mixture and mix to combine.
- Whisk eggs into the yogurt-sugar mixture and incorporate well.
- Add the liquids, using a spatula, into the bowl with the flour mixture. Gently mix until it is all incorporated.
- Pour olive oil into the batter a little bit at a time and fold.
- Fold in the blood orange segments. Then fold in the raisins or dried cherries.
- Scrape batter into loaf pan and smooth out the top.
- Bake cake for about 55 minutes, or until it is golden and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
- Let it cool on a rack for 5 minutes, then unmold and cool to room temperature right-side up.
Optional: Serve with whipped cream and honey blood orange compote. See blog post for compote instructions.
Notes
- A good quality extra virgin olive oil makes all the difference. I use Melies which is a premium Greek extra virgin olive oil.
- For the yogurt, there isn’t a specific measurement of how much you need for this recipe. It will depend on how much juice you get from the blood oranges, as stated in step #5 of the recipe. If you have buttermilk, you can use it instead of yogurt.
- If you don’t find blood oranges, don’t worry. You can instead use regular oranges, pink or regular grapefruits, or Meyer lemons.
- Refrigerate the cake after a day.
- Whipped cream is optional. If you have crème Fraiche, that is a great substitute too.
- If you do not want the blood orange compote, make a simple glaze with some blood orange juice and confectioner sugar. Drizzle the glaze over the cake, and you will get such a beautiful shade of pink color.
- Prep Time: 20
- Cook Time: 55
- Category: loaf cake
- Method: baking
- Cuisine: International
