Olive Oil-Almond Cake

I chose this recipe for March because I like to bake and because it had a couple of ingredients that I was somewhat skeptical of: olive oil and buckwheat flour.

I know people everywhere have been making olive-oil based cakes for a while now, but my butter-based prejudices told me, "That's just weird. Nothing is as good as baked goods made with butter." I was worried about an olive-y aftertaste and that kind of greasy moistness I don't care for in a cake.

Buckwheat flour was also a hard sell for me. I remember loving the Aunt Jemima buckwheat pancakes my dad used to make us on weekends, but somewhere in the meantime I tried and hated kasha (buckwheat groats), and from then on I have associated buckwheat with bitter and rancid. Still, I do eat and enjoy buckwheat crêpes on a regular basis: in France, all savory crêpes are made with buckwheat flour. Therefore, this was an easy ingredient to procure.

OK, enough whining now. The cake comes together very easily: you just whip eggs (with baking powder at this stage because I'm weird), add sugar and oil and flavorings, and whip some more. Then come flour, buckwheat flour, and ground almonds (another easy ingredient to find). And you're pretty much done. I used some ground almonds to coat my pan for an extra almond kick.

While the cake was baking, I made some vanilla crème fraîche, since it's more available and less expensive (and slightly less rich) than mascarpone. Only mascarpone can make crème fraîche look like diet food in comparison.

This is the innards of half a vanilla bean: even though I have a whole bunch in my spice drawer, I'm still a vanilla bean miser. It was plenty to speckle the cream and make it delicious.

And here's the finished product, served with strawberries macerated in vanilla sugar (thus the dark specks) to celebrate the arrival of spring and our two guests, Bob from Pontlevoy and Katrin, an exchange student from Germany.

Did this cake win me over? I certainly liked it. I tried it by itself (not bad), with the cream (better), and with the strawberries and cream (my favorite). I didn't get a strong sense of either the olive oil or the buckwheat, since the orange and almond flavors dominate. There was no ranting and raving at the dinner table, but people seemed to have no problem putting away the cake, either. So I would say this recipe is a great "backdrop" cake: easy to put together and serve with seasonal fruit.