Olive Oil Cakes

Ligurian Lemon Cake

Olive oil cakes are cakes made with olive oil in the batter...shocking, I know. They are incredible! The oil makes them moist but doesn't weigh them down too much. Plus the lovely flavor of the olive oil comes comes through in the cake, in contrast to most cakes where you add vegetable oil so that you won't be able to taste the oil. Now that I've said oil so much it has stopped seeming like a word (at least to me as I'm the one typing it) I'll get on to describing the whole dessert.

My favorite of the two desserts was the ligurian lemon cake with raspberries baked right into the cake and topped with bruleed Swiss meringue (although I could have done without the meringue). We served this with a very clear raspberry sauce, an almond tuile, and incredible honey almond gelato. I think the tuiles were a little out of proportion for the plate, but they did taste good so I don't mind too much.

Beaumes-de-Venise Cake

The other cake we made was not my favorite of the night but one of my favorites of the unit. It was a beaumes-de-venise cake with has grapes baked into it; served on a rectangular cookie made out of linzer tart dough; with an uncooked grape compote (to me that's more of a grape salad, but semantics aside, it was delicious), fromage blanc sherbet, more of the raspberry sauce (I may have left this off), and a cocoa nib caramel tuile. I liked the first dessert more because I loved the combination of tart lemon and sweet raspberry in the delicious, moist, rich but still light cake and the honey almond gelato was to die for. Still though, the grape cake (with a hint of beaumes-de-venise, also know as muscat, wine) and all its accompaniments were excellent. I'd be extremely happy if I got either of these desserts in a restaurant.