My Unbirthday Olive Oil Cake

Well, here it is: an unbirthday cake for my unbirthday. I was getting so many sweet well-wishers for my sixtieth - and I just turned 57 - that I have been feeling positively spry. Serves me right for complaining about turning 60 three years ahead of time! (I do like to worry extensively before any major event - but I suppose three years was excessive - even for me.)
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I did my Cover Girl Dinner midweek. And with my gimpy but amazing technicolor ankle combined with sounding like Sneezy-the-dwarf, I was going to keep it simple. And I yearned for a not-gooey dessert but something fresh, moist, cakey and sunny.

The Olive Oil cake from Abraco Coffee Shop in New York City did the trick. With a hint of orange zest, it soothed without making my teeth tingle, courted me sweetly and gave me the illusion of sitting on a Tuscan hillside.

And so quickly it went...

And was gone. The recipe is from September 2009 Bon Appetit. I changed little - except to add some extra orange zest.

1-1/2 cups organic unbleached white flour*

1 cup organic sugar*

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp coarse Kosher salt

2 large organic eggs*

3/4 organic whole milk*

1/2 cup mild-flavored organic olive oil*

2 tsp finely-grated orange peel

*My amazing-technicolor ankle won't let me walk much or drive, so I used organic if it was in the house - and if it wasn't - I used regular

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Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Oil and flour a 9x5x3 metal loaf pan. Whisk first 5 ingredients in large bowl. Whisk eggs, milk, olive oil and orange peel in medium bowl. Gradually whisk egg mixture into dry ingredients. Transfer to prepared pan.

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Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, 60-65 minutes. (Mine took 60 minutes.) Cool in pan on rack 20 minutes. Invert pan to remove cake. Cool completely top side up! Watch it disappear.