How do these two flavors work together?

Time: 3 hours 45 minutes + overnight

Difficulty: 1/5

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

According to the description for this recipe in Italian American, this is pretty much a Tres Leches inspired olive oil cake. I think I’ve only had Tres Leches once or twice before, but I know that I like it. Olive oil cake isn’t super common, but I know that I typically like cakes that use it. How do they turn out when combined? That’s what this analysis will discover.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

I think the key ingredient in this cake is probably the olive oil. This recipe uses a pretty good amount of it, plus it’s in the name. As far as the other ingredients go, while there are a lot, none of them are particularly hard to find or special. I wouldn’t leave anything out, though.

Tools:

• 13x9” baking dish

• Stand Mixer

• Skewer or tooth pick

Cooking Review:

Prep: 2 minutes

The prep for this recipe included zesting a lemon.

Preparing Egg Yolks: 9 minutes

After separating the egg yolks and whites, the egg yolks were whisked with water, olive oil, vanilla paste, and sugar until combined.

Preparing Egg Whites: 10 minutes

In a stand mixer, I whisked the egg whites with the lemon zest and cream of tartar on high speed until stiff peaks were achieved, about 4 minutes. The sugar was slowly added in while continuing to whisk on high speed for about 2 minutes. Once all the sugar was added, I continued whisk for another 4 minutes.

Mixing batter: 13 minutes

I missed the part where I was supposed to mix the dry ingredients together, so I did that at this point. I then mixed the flour mixture into the egg yolk mixture and folded in the egg white mixture. Once well combined. I poured the batter into my 13x9 baking dish.

Bake: 47 minutes

After baking for 47 minutes, a cake tester came out the middle of the cake cleanly and I set it upside down on a cooling rack to cool.

Cooling + making Soak: 2 hours

While the cake was baking, I made the soak by combining the olive oil with the milks, lemon zest, salt and vanilla. I let the cake cool for two hours before adding the soak to it.

Soak: 16 minutes

After the cake had cooled, I poked holes in the top with a skewer and poured the soak over the top. Just be patient when adding it, allowing the cake to soak up what you added before adding more.

Topping: 12 minutes

After letting the cake sit in the refrigerator overnight, I whipped the heavy cream in the bowl of a stand mixer and added the mascarpone, sugar, salt, and vanilla to whip it all together. I added it to the top of the cake and it was ready to taste.

Analysis:

There was more than enough soak for this cake. I know that tres leches is typically pretty wet (at least the ones I’ve had), but this one probably had a little too much. The cake did hold up to the soak pretty well, though. It didn’t become super mushy and held its shape. The olive oil comes though pretty nicely and is balanced out by the sweetness of the rest of the cake and soak. There is also some lemon flavor that comes through. The topping really just adds a light smooth texture to the top of the cake. I don’t think it adds much flavor wise, as the cake easily overpowers it.  I can definitely taste the elements of both olive oil cake and Tres Leches and I think they work well together. It really is just like a Tres Leches with olive oil instead of caramel flavors. I’m going to give this recipe a 7/10. I wouldn’t mind having it again, but I probably wouldn’t make it again.