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05/20/2008 Archived Entry: "The Missing Pound Cake"

There is something very funny about doing a radio show in my pajamas, while sipping my morning coffee, sitting in my home office, all comfortable and cozy. That’s what I do every Monday morning these days, when I am on Robin Hood Radio in Sharon, Connecticut, from 7:40 to 8 a.m. (www.robinhoodradio.com). The funny thing is: When I am talking to the host of the show, Marshall Miles, I am so comfortable that I feel like it is merely a phone conversation with an old friend and I forget that there are actually a lot of people listening to us. Besides the live audience in the so-called Northwest Corner of the state, and in the southern Berkshires of Massachusetts, there is the computer audience, which is what most of you would be.

In case some of you have forgotten, you can listen to my 20-minute segments on your computer, at any time of day or night, even months after the segment aired live. By 11 a.m. on Monday, the show is pod cast on Robin Hood’s web site. And it is archived there for eternity or something like that – a few months at least.

Anyway, it seems I promised to put this funny recipe for a kind of pound cake – it’s made fully with olive oil and in the food processor – on my website (here), and I haven’t yet.

In addition, while on the air, I apparently forgot to give the baking temperature (350) and baking time (1 hour). And as many of you seemed to have jotted down the ingredients and instructions that I dictated on the radio, awaiting the printed word, the temperature and time, I have been getting emails, and Robin Hood Radio has been getting emails and phone calls.

I am afraid that all this fuss has perhaps hyped this cake recipe to a point where it will be a disappointment when you finally make it. But that’s a risk I have to take. Let me say again what I said on the radio (Well, I hope I said it. As I am now saying, I never remember what I said.) It’s just a nice pound cake, something that my southern Italian friends would serve as a breakfast cake. Its claim to fame is not its to-die-for flavor or texture – although both are quite good -- but that it is an olive oil cake whipped up in a food processor. It’s a novelty. Even though I said in my last letter than I can’t give everything away before publication, which is 18 months or so from now, I must, indeed, share this with you now.

Enjoy the cake!

OLIVE OIL “PLUM” CAKE

Makes 1 4 1/4 to 5 by 8 1/4 to 9-inch loaf

Cecilia found this innovative recipe for a beautifully moist, fine-grained loaf cake among her mother’s papers after Signora Elvira died at age 94 in 2007. Besides that it is made entirely in a food processor, the shortening is olive oil. Very modern. Signora Elvira, as I called her, always liked to be up-to-date.

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup water
2 heaping tablespoons cocoa (optional)

Place a rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and flour a 4 1/4 to 5- by 8 1/4 to 9-inch loaf pan.

Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Mix well, then set aside.

In the bowl of a food processor, beat the eggs until well mixed.

Add the sugar and process until the eggs are light yellow and thick, a few seconds.

Pour in the vanilla. While the machine is running, slowly pour in the olive oil.

Add the flour all at once and pulse until the flour is mostly incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Add the water and process until the batter is smooth. Do not overwork the batter.

For an all-yellow cake, pour all the batter into the prepared pan.

For a marble cake, pour 2/3 to 3/4 of the batter into the prepared pan.

To the small amount of batter remaining in the processor bowl, add the cocoa. Process until smooth.

Pour the chocolate batter on top of the light batter. With a table knife, swirl the chocolate into the white batter.

Bake for 1 hour, or until the top of the cake has browned, mounded and beautifully split.

Let cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes before removing.

Insert a sharp knife around the outside edge of the cake before attempting to turn out.

Serve warm or at room temperature. Slice with a serrated knife.