How to Make a Simple Lemon and Olive Oil Cake

Why a Lemon and Olive Oil Cake Belongs in Your Repertoire

There is a particular kind of cake that earns its keep: not the showstopper you build for a birthday, but the plain loaf you can mix in one bowl on a grey Tuesday and still be eating happily on Friday. A lemon and olive oil cake is exactly that cake. The oil keeps the crumb tender and damp long after a butter cake would have dried out, and because there is no butter to cream, you can have it in the oven within fifteen minutes of deciding to make it.

The lemon does the lifting. Zest, rubbed into the sugar until the whole bowl smells like a citrus grove, gives a clean, bright perfume. Good olive oil gives the background — a faint peppery fruitiness that makes people pause and ask what is in it. Nothing here is difficult, but the quality of two ingredients, the oil and the lemons, will decide whether the cake is merely nice or genuinely memorable.

This is also, quietly, a gardener's cake. If you grow herbs or keep a lemon tree in a pot, you already have the finishing touches waiting outside the back door.

What You Need

For a 900 g (2 lb) loaf tin, roughly 20 cm by 10 cm:

• 175 g caster sugar, plus 2 tbsp for the drizzle
• Zest of 2 unwaxed lemons, finely grated, and 3 tbsp of their juice
• 3 large eggs, at room temperature
• 120 ml milk, or 100 g Greek yogurt loosened with a splash of milk
• 120 ml extra virgin olive oil, plus a little for greasing and 2 tbsp for the drizzle
• 180 g plain flour
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ½ tsp fine sea salt

Use an oil you actually enjoy the taste of. If it is bitter enough to make you wince off the spoon, it will taste bitter in the cake. A soft, buttery, everyday extra virgin is the right choice here — save the aggressive peppery oil for finishing.

A Word From the Kitchen Garden

Unwaxed lemons matter, because you are eating the peel. If you grow a lemon in a pot — a 'Meyer' on a sunny, sheltered patio is the most forgiving choice in the UK — you will get a handful of fruit in a good year, and the zest is far more fragrant than anything from a supermarket. Bring the pot under cover before the first hard frost, water sparingly through winter, and feed weekly from spring.

Herbs are the easier win. A sprig of rosemary or thyme laid in the tin while the cake bakes, or a few mint leaves shredded into the drizzle, adds a green, resinous note that sits beautifully alongside lemon. Olive trees will grow in milder parts of the country, but fruit is unreliable, so buy your oil from a shop and grow the herbs yourself.

Making the Cake

Heat the oven to 180°C, 160°C fan, gas mark 4. Grease the loaf tin lightly with oil, then line the base and long sides with a single strip of baking parchment, leaving the ends proud so you can lift the cake out later.

Put the caster sugar in a large bowl, add the lemon zest, and rub the two together with your fingertips for a minute or so. The sugar will become damp, clumpy and deeply fragrant — this is the single most important step in the whole recipe.

Whisk in the eggs, one at a time, then the milk, then the olive oil. The mixture will look slightly separated at the oil stage; keep whisking and it will come together into a glossy, pourable liquid.

Sift in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Fold gently with a spatula or a balloon whisk used in slow circles until no dry patches remain. Stop there. A few small lumps are better than an overworked, tough crumb.

Pour into the tin and bake for 45 to 50 minutes. Check at 30 minutes: if the top is browning faster than you would like, lay a sheet of foil loosely over it. The cake is done when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out with a few moist crumbs, not wet batter. An internal temperature of about 96°C is a useful guide if you keep a thermometer.

The Olive Oil and Lemon Drizzle

While the cake bakes, warm 3 tbsp lemon juice with 2 tbsp caster sugar in a small pan until the sugar dissolves, then take it off the heat and whisk in 2 tbsp olive oil. It will look thin and slightly cloudy, and that is exactly right.

As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, prick the surface all over with a skewer and spoon the drizzle across it slowly, letting each spoonful sink in before the next. Leave the cake in the tin for 15 minutes so the syrup settles into the crumb, then lift it out by the parchment and cool on a rack. The crust will stay crisp at the edges while the inside turns almost custardy.

Troubleshooting, Keeping and Variations

• Soggy middle: the oven ran cool or the tin was too small. Bake a further 8 to 10 minutes and check again.
• Dense crumb: over-mixing. Fold until the flour just disappears.
• Too sharp: your lemons were large. Reduce the juice to 2 tbsp in the drizzle.
• Keeping: wrapped in parchment inside a tin, it stays good for four days, improving on the second. It freezes well for up to three months, sliced and interleaved with parchment.
• Variations: swap 2 tbsp of the milk for limoncello; add a tablespoon of finely chopped rosemary; or replace the lemon with orange zest and a little ground cardamom.

Serve it in thick slices with a spoonful of crème fraîche or yogurt, and a cup of tea. It is not a cake that needs anything else.