An olive oil cake recipe that always works

Joining the olive-oil-in-dessert trend with an oldie but a goodie

Hello! Hello!

As many of you know, I’ve been working on (and soon have to finish the manuscript for) my next book. It’s all about simple cakes and I’ve been baking away, making loaf cakes and bundts and cakes with fruits and nuts and also cakes with nothing but the basics: butter, flour, sugar and eggs. It’s been fun — except when it’s not. Except when I can’t make what’s in my head come out of the oven just the way I imagine it. I’ve got a cocoa loaf cake that’s making me nuts and that I might give up on. Sometimes admitting defeat — or at least setting a project aside for a little a while — is a good alternative. With luck, it’ll free brain space for something new and delicious.

But truly, I digress, because the cake I want to tell you about today is one that always works. And it’s worked for almost 30 — count’em — years! Pierre Hermé’s Ligurian Lemon Cake made with extra-virgin olive oil.

Because I’m always working on something new, I rarely go back to older recipes, no matter how muc…