Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–so glad you’re here!
I’ve had a lot of fun sharing thoughts and tips about olive oil with you. Earlier in the week, my post covered the different kinds of olive oil (EVOO, Virgin and “Light” or “Refined”) and yesterday, I shared tips on choosing and keeping olive oil fresh.
I decided to wrap the week up by sharing a rich and satisfying dessert made from olive oil: olive oil cake. And since the cake uses honey as a sweetener, it’s also a nice introduction to next week’s Biblical food item: honey.
Other than lemons, this cake includes many foods that folks would have had access to in Biblical times, including olive oil, honey, yogurt, flour and eggs, which is one of the reasons I found it to be so particularly lovely. The other is that it is just so yummy. It’s very rich, very moist and quite dense. In my experimentation, I used a cream cheese frosting, thinking that the tang of the cream cheese would be enough of a counterpoint to the richness of the cake. It was delicious, but a little too much rich-on-top-of-rich, if you know what I mean. A friend suggested either a raspberry or a lemon glaze as a counterpoint, which I think would be delightful–and frankly, better–and I’ve included a recipe for a simple lemon glaze to drizzle over top of the cake.
I also like this cake because it’s easy enough to make on a busy weekday–even if you decide to make the lemon glaze to go with it.
But I guess what I like best about this cake is that it’s the embodiment of how food can make connections. In this case, with the past. Since our Biblical ancestors would have had access to most of the ingredients in this cake, might they have actually made it? I can particularly see it being served with coffee in the morning for breakfast, or in the afternoon as a “pick-me-up.” Coffee and tea are not mentioned in the Bible specifically, but might this cake have been served alongside a hot beverage for an afternoon coffee klatch in Biblical times? I’ll let you decide 🙂
Join me next week for honey week!
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
