passover week 2023 - flourless lemon olive oil cake

passover week 2023 - flourless lemon olive oil cake

• 21 Mar 2023

Welcome to Passover week 2023. Passover means baking without flour, so naturally flourless cake recipes are the bomb. This Charlotte Ree flourless lemon olive oil cake caught my eye. The cake is made with hazelnut meal but as I didn't have quite enough hazelnut meal in the fridge I used a bit of almond meal in the recipe.

I did all my measuring the night before baking as well as lining the tin so I was able to put the cake together in no time. For decoration I used some candied lemon rind I had stored in the fridge plus a dusting of icing sugar.

Vanilla extract isn't kosher for Passover so if you'd like to make your own, here's a recipe from Ottolenghi.

Homemade vanilla essence - Ottolenghi
4 vanilla pods
500 ml water
125g caster sugar

Method
Cut the vanilla pods lengthways, remove the seeds inside and put everything into a pan. Add the water and sugar, bring to a boil and cook until there is about one third of the liquid left. Let it cool before pouring into a sealed jar or bottle. Once opened, I would store this in the fridge. Let the pods dry out and you can put them into your sugar container to make vanilla scented sugar

Here’s the recipe for you which makes a 17cm cake. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Flourless lemon olive oil cake

Ingredients

50g hazelnut meal

50g almond meal

3 tsp finely grated lemon zest

pinch of sea salt

100 ml extra-virgin olive oil

135 g caster sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

icing sugar, sifted, for dusting

cream or yoghurt, to serve

Method

Preheat the oven to 170°C, conventional. Grease a 17 cm springform tin and line the base with baking paper.

In a small bowl, combine the hazelnut and almond meals, lemon zest and sea salt. Set to one side.

Place the olive oil, caster sugar and eggs in a large bowl and beat with hand-held electric beaters on high speed for 3 minutes, or until the mixture is pale and resembles thickened cream.

Reduce the speed to medium–low and add the vanilla, beating continuously. Once combined, add the nut mixture and stir gently with a spatula. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 40–45 minutes. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes on a wire rack, then remove the cake from the tin and set aside to cool. 

Dust with icing sugar and sprinkle with a little extra lemon zest, then serve as is or with cream, yoghurt. Store leftovers in an airtight container at room temperature for 2–3 days.

The cake is just lovely, chewy and moist all at the same time and not particularly sweet. As the cake is flourless and dairy free, if served without cream or yoghurt, it's perfect for Seder night.

See you all again tomorrow with another bake for Passover week 2023.

Bye for now,

Jillian