Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

[connie]

This is great for people who are allergic to dairy (like myself) and tastes yummy but under no circumstances use extra virgin olive oil otherwise you will taste the oil and not the chocolate in the end product and please don't ask how I know this, my OH is not one for reading labels!

Ingredients

• ⅔ cup regular olive oil (plus more for greasing). Do not use extra virgin for this.
• 6 tablespoons good-quality unsweetened cocoa (sifted)
• ½ cup boiling water
• 2 teaspoons good quality vanilla extract
• 1 ½ cups ground almonds (or 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour)
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 cup superfine sugar
• 3 large eggs

Method

• Preheat your oven to 170°C/gas mark 3/325ºF. Grease a 22 or 23 cm/ 9inch spring form tin with a little oil and line the base with baking parchment.
• Sift the cocoa powder into a bowl and stir in the boiling water until you have a smooth but still runny paste. Stir in the vanilla extract, then put aside to cool.
• In small bowl combine the ground almonds (or flour) with the baking soda and the pinch of salt.
• In your mixer, beat the sugar, olive oil and eggs (egg whisk beater) together vigorously for about 3 minutes until you have a pale yellow thickened cream.
• Now add the cocoa mixture to the mixer, beating as you go.
• Slowly add the ground almond (or flour) mixture to the m batter in your mixer.
• Pour the liquid batter into the prepared tin and bake for 40-45 minutes. The sides should be set but the very centre, on top, should look slightly damp. The knife test should come up mostly clean but with a few sticky chocolate crumbs clinging to it.
• Allow to cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack, then carefully slide a knife between the sides of the cake and the tin and extract from the tin.
• YYou can serve it warm or cold or make into a 'Victoria sponge' style cake if you make 2 of them.

If you double this and make 2 you will be able to make a layered cake that you can join together with homemade cashew nut cream and jam (or homemade chocolate cashew nut cream...)

 

[Trellum]

Awesome! Gosh, you have the most yummy ideas ever!!!!!! I totally loved the chocolate cashew nut cream idea!!!! I'll definitely try this out when I try your recipe! I suffer from IBS so me and dairy don't mix well, hehehe! Thanks a lot! I'll definitely try this... sounds so good and healthy.

 

[DancingLady]

I don't know if I have ever seen olive oil that isn't extra virgin in the stores. It seems like the only kind people want to buy now days. Hadn't really thought of there being another kind.

What brand of oil do you use?

 

[connie]

I don't know if I have ever seen olive oil that isn't extra virgin in the stores. It seems like the only kind people want to buy now days. Hadn't really thought of there being another kind.

What brand of oil do you use?

We have several different types of olive oil in our cupboards.
I'm in the UK, so brands probably won't really mean anything, but if I went into our local supermarket I would be met with a whole wall of different olive oils to choose from.
Just putting Olive Oil into my local supermarkets online store has resulted in 64 hits and in store there will be more!

For general cooking and this recipe we would use the shop's own olive oil. not extra virgin, just their own 'olive oil'.
Their own label standard olive oil is £3.50 for 1L.
but varieties can range from Italian, Spanish or Greek, to normal to extra virgin, to stuff that is +£20 a litre....