Lemon Olive Oil Cake

Something has changed, something is not the same. Everything!! I'm sure by now you have noticed that Livin' Lemon had a bit of a face lift today. For the last couple months, I have been working with the ever talented Amy from Creative Soul Spectrum. She brought my citrusy dreams to life and I took a few too many selfies to get a perfect introduction photo. I'm so excited by the results and glad my blog doesn't look ridiculously amateur anymore! Here's to Amy and lemons!

Lovin the lemons!

To celebrate, I took a crack at lemon olive oil cake. A few weeks ago, I went home to clean out some childhood toys and high school mementos as the parent folk prepared to sell their house. We moved to this house when I was half way through high school and I was thrilled because it was in the bustling heart of town (mind you it's about a mile stretch with a Starbucks and an ice cream shop and that's considered bustling). Although I have hardly been back since graduating high school except for winter break, it's the last house I grew up in so I had some bittersweet moments saying goodbye.

My first oven

Olive forks with a sassy sense of humor

Along the sweet side though, was a visit to a local farmer's market. When I was a teenager, this town was super boring and mischief was only managed for silly things like being on a playground without a small child (it's illegal apparently). So to discover there were all these new places in the area was thrilling. The farmer's market had a variety of local vendors, both farmers and shop owners alike. One of the stalls we stopped at was Eat This! where they had jars of unique jam and cake. Cake in a jar, who knew? After sampling their lemon olive oil cake, I decided to buy a jar and promptly ate the whole thing hand over fork.

Eat This for suuuure

I had heard of olive oil cake before so thought this was finally my chance to invent a recipe a la Eat This! I could make olive oil cake and then add some lemon and I would finally have experimented. But alas, the first thing that came up when I searched for olive oil cake recipes was lemon and orange olive oil cakes. So much for being original.

...also highly coveted by my mom

Adorable little pitcher....

So I made some lemon olive oil cake and took a crack at baking in a jar. My greatest fear was the jar would explode and glass would be everywhere. This fear was only softened by the realization that the cake was originally baked in said jar and the jars are returnable so they must be reused by the professionals. Just in case, I put most of the batter into a cupcake tin for ease of sharing.

Yellow mixing bowls make me happy

Using my mom and grandmother's yellow mixing bowls, I brewed up a batch. These bowls are new to my kitchen as I slowly transition everything I own into a happy yellow palette (kind of kidding). It's a simple recipe involving a bowl of wet ingredients and a bowl of dry ingredients. The lemon juice and olive oil are added to the mixture of eggs and sugar before combining with the dry ingredients, including the zesty lemons. I've baked with olive oil once before and the pumpkin cupcakes turned out tasting like olive oil. The batter also tasted a little olivey so I was relieved to find the cupcakes tasting exactly right. I was still worried the jar would explode all over the muffin pan ones so I baked them separately. Good news! The jar didn't explode and they came out quite tasty.

Coming up on the blog, a series of posts on rhubarb season. It's gonna be tasty and delicious!

Bite sized lemon cake!

Recipe- adapted from a Google search recipe result

• 4 eggs

• 1 cup sugar

• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

• 1 cup flour

• 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 1/4 tsp salt

• Zest from 1 lemon

• Juice from 2 lemons

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease your desired baking pan such as muffin pan, jar or 9" cake pan.
2. Beat together the eggs and sugar until very pale and fluffy. The mixture should be thick.
3. Slowly stream the olive oil and lemon juice into the eggs and sugar mixture and mix together until combined.
4. In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and lemon zest. Gently fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Use a rubber spatula to get all of it mixed together.
5. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes. The baking time will vary by the pan you choose so monitor it closely to prevent them from burning.
6. Let the cake cool in pan before removing and eating. Or just eat it straight with a fork.