I Love/Olive Oil Cake

I really wanted to make an olive oil cake,

so for a dinner we hosted to celebrate Carmina's birthday,

I made one.

The cake base gets really thick, 

but it's a really gorgeous color.

It smells amazing.

And instead of gobs of butter,

it's a 1/2 cup of extra-virgin olive oil for the fat.

Is it healthier?

I have no idea, 

but I'd like to think so.

The recipe doesn't say at first,

but you'll have to transfer and wash out your bowl/paddle of the base cake batter

to whip up the egg whites.

(Unless you have an extra bowl on hand.)

I had a mini cake pan that I'd never used.

I forgot what a mess it was to make cupcakes--

let alone mini cakes--

because of the scooping issue.

Then I remembered from my Cupcake Diaries books 

that the girls use an ice-cream scoop to divvy up the batter.

It kind of worked better than two spoons.

You'll want to use a really good extra-virgin olive oil.

Don't be cheap.

(They'd charge at least $5 to $12 for a dessert like this at a restaurant,

and do you know why the restaurant cake might taste better?

Because they didn't cheap out on the extra-virgin olive oil.)

Your main flavor is coming from the olive oil.

They looked a bit like bouchons.

And they tasted wonderful.

I used the Olive Oil Cake recipe from Mark Bittman's

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

(The "fluffy, moist" description won over the Mario Batali recipe in Molto Italiano.)

I felt like this was an easy cake to make,
and the results were much greater than my expectations!