Lemon olive oil cake
A tender, golden cake with a crackly sugar top and real lemon in every bite, mixed with a whisk and olive oil instead of butter.
- 80 min total
- 15 min hands-on
- Follow-a-recipe easy
- Serves 8
- About $0.73 a serving
- 320 calories
- Good the next day
- Vegetarian
Dolly says: Make the full amount. Whatever’s left keeps for tomorrow.
Ingredients
For 8 servings.
- 2 lemons, zested and juiced
- 3 large eggs
- ½ cup plain Greek yogurt
- 2 tbsp powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)
From your pantry
- ½ cup olive oil, plus a little for the pan
- ¾ cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon for the top
- 1½ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
Each serving has about 320 calories, 6 g protein, 39 g carbs and 16 g fat, and costs about $0.73 at typical US grocery prices. Both are estimates from what the recipe uses.
Missing something?
- No lemons? Limes work.
- No plain Greek yogurt? Plain yogurt or sour cream works.
Steps
Tap an underlined word for a quick explanation.
the oven to 350°F. Rub a 9-inch round cake pan with a little olive oil and with a circle of .
Preheat. Preheating means turning the oven on before you start, so it’s fully hot when the food goes in. Food that starts in a cold oven cooks unevenly and doesn’t brown the same.
How you’ll know: The oven beeps or its light clicks off, usually 10 to 15 minutes after you turn it on.
Line a pan. Lining a pan means covering the bottom, and often the sides, with parchment paper or foil before the food goes in. Leave the paper hanging over two sides, and you can lift bars or brownies out in one piece to cut them neatly.
How you’ll know: The paper lies flat against the bottom, with flaps sticking up on two sides like handles.
Parchment paper. Parchment paper is a nonstick, oven-safe paper for lining pans. Food lifts right off and cleanup is easy, but don’t swap in wax paper or put parchment under the broiler.
How you’ll know: It lies flat in the pan, and the food slides off when you lift it.
Dolly’s tip: Trace the pan on the parchment and cut just inside the line. Flip it so the pencil side faces down.both lemons into a large bowl, add the sugar, and rub it together with your fingers until it smells like lemon and looks like damp sand.
Zest. Zest is the thin, colored outer layer of citrus peel, rubbed off on the smallest holes of a grater. It holds the fruit’s fragrant oils, so it adds bright flavor without the sourness of juice.
How you’ll know: You see bright flecks and smell citrus right away; stop when you reach the white layer, which is bitter.
Dolly’s tip: Rubbing pulls the oil out of the zest, and that oil is where most of the lemon flavor lives.Juice the lemons; you need about ¼ cup. the juice, eggs, olive oil and yogurt into the sugar until smooth.
Whisk. Whisking means beating quickly with a whisk or a fork to blend things together. It smooths out lumps and mixes eggs, oil or sauces evenly.
How you’ll know: It all looks one even color and texture, with no streaks or lumps.
the flour, add it with the baking powder and salt, and stir shows.
Spoon and level. Spoon and level is how to measure flour: spoon it lightly into the measuring cup, then sweep the extra off the top with the back of a knife. Scooping straight from the bag packs in too much flour and makes bakes dry and heavy.
How you’ll know: The flour sits flat and even with the rim, and you never pressed it down or tapped the cup.
Just combined. Mixing until just combined means stopping the moment the dry flour disappears into the batter. More stirring makes cakes, brownies and muffins tough, so a few small lumps are fine.
How you’ll know: No streaks of dry flour are left, but the batter still looks a little lumpy, and that’s right.
Food safety: Don’t eat raw dough or batter, not even a lick of the spoon. Raw flour can carry E. coli and raw eggs can carry salmonella until they’re cooked. The one exception is dough with no eggs, made with flour heated to 165°F.
Pour the batter into the pan and sprinkle the tablespoon of sugar evenly over the top.
Dolly’s tip: The sugar bakes into a thin, crackly crust. It’s the best part.Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until and a in the middle comes out clean.
Golden brown. Golden brown is the color of good toast, somewhere between yellow and light brown. It means the outside is cooked and crisp but not burnt.
How you’ll know: It looks like toast and smells toasty; dark brown with a bitter smell means it went too far.
Toothpick test. The toothpick test tells you whether a cake or brownie is baked through: poke a toothpick into the middle and pull it out. Wet batter on it means it needs more time.
How you’ll know: For cakes it comes out clean or with a crumb or two; for fudgy brownies, a few moist crumbs but no wet batter. A thin knife works too.
Timer: 35 min
Food safety: For the safest eggs, cook until the whites are fully set and the yolks begin to thicken. Dishes made with eggs are done at 160°F.
Cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then run a butter knife around the edge and turn the cake out .
Cool on a rack. Cooling on a rack means setting a hot pan or fresh cookies on a wire grid, so air moves underneath and the bottom doesn’t steam and turn soggy. No rack? The cool grates of your stovetop work the same way.
How you’ll know: The bottom of the pan feels barely warm when you touch it, and bars cut cleanly instead of crumbling.
Timer: 15 min
Flip it right side up and let it cool completely, then with powdered sugar if you like and cut into 8 wedges.
Dust. Dusting means sprinkling a fine, even layer of powdered sugar or cocoa over the top. Shake it through a small strainer, tapping the side, so it falls like snow instead of in clumps.
How you’ll know: The top looks evenly frosted, like a light snowfall, with no thick piles.
Plan this in Dollop, and get the grocery list
Dollop picks a dessert for treat night, puts what you need on the week’s grocery list, and walks you through each step.
