Mario Batali's Orange Olive Oil Cake

In recent months, we have become obsessed with a new neighborhood restaurant called Bar Stuzzichini, an Italian tapas bar with unreal appetizers in the Flatiron district of New York City. We took our authentically Italian friend, Donata, there and she was immediately smitten! We always start our dinner with the "Stuzzichini Misti", which is a choice of 5 appetizers for 2 people for a well-priced $24! Highly recommend the ceci (chickpea) and/or caponata crostini, polpo (grilled octopus), the carciofi (heavenly fried artichokes) and the polpette (meatballs). Everytime I go, I order the grilled tuna with a cool pesto. Many of the people I have taken there love the orecchiette e cavolfiore (little ears with cauliflower and breadcrumbs).

I recently started finishing off my meal with the orange scented olive oil cake and decided to try to replicate at home with Mario Batali's recipe from a cookbook Donata bought me for Christmas a few years ago!

We brought it over to our friends' delicious dinner party last night and it was a very good cake especially when served with vanilla ice cream. It's great for a brunch party or a dessert. Perhaps I am my own worst critic, but I would have preferred it to be more moist and spongy. Please feel free to make suggestions on how I can moisten it up. I saw that Giada has a version with whole milk, more citrus juice and normal, all-purpose flour- I will try that next.

Olive Oil & Orange Cake
Mario Batali's "Simple Italian Food, Recipes from My Two Villages"
Serves 8

6 medium oranges
2 1/4 cups bread flour
1 Tbsp baking soda
4 large eggs
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
confectioners'/icing sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 350. Oil a 9 inch round cake pan.

Remove the zest from the oranges and juice one of them. Set fruit aside for another use. Sift the flour and baking soda together onto a piece of waxed paper.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs and salt together with an electric mixer until frothy and light, about 2 minutes. Slowly add the sugar, continuing to mix 2 minutes longer. Add the flour and baking sida gradually to the egg mixture, then mix 1 more minute.

In another bowl, combine the olive oil, orange zest and juice. Using a spoon, stir it into the egg mixture, folding until just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Invert onto wire rack.

Cool to room temperature, dust confectioners'/icing sugar onto cake, cut into wedges and serve with vanilla bean ice cream.

Raising Elephants

Here's a lesson I learned this week: When make fondant cakes in tropical weather, keep them small. I'd been making cupcakes with fondant figurines for a while now, so when a friend asked if I could make her a birthday cake with elephants on it, I thought, now why the hell not?

So off I set to work, fashioning the cutest little elephant (well, at least I thought so) sitting up with a fat round belly complete with a belly button and a raised trunk. I figured I didn't want to bother with leaving it in an air-conditioned room because a) I'm tight and b) I didn't want it to wilt the minute the cake was taken out of the dry air-conditioning and into our humid climes. If it was going to wilt, it may as well do so right in front of me where I could rectify it. And of course, it didn't disappoint. When I woke up the next morning, my little fella had put on some weight, lost some height, and was slipping backwards. His trunk had lost a little enthusiasm too -- it was no longer raised.

So it was back to the drawing board. After flipping through a couple of books, I found inspiration in this one. A lying-down elephant, in a sort of clambering-up-the-cake kinda position. Why didn't I think of that? I also made a little baby one to accompany it.

I made this two days before it was to be collected, hoping against all hope that it would dry. It rained and rained and my elephants got less perky by the day. But I guess they held up well enough (the picture was taken shortly before it was sent on its way to the birthday girl).

Over lunch the next day, my friend D, who is spectacular at making fondant cakes — she's made entire Thomas the Tank Engine cakes, Spiderman cakes, and teddy bear creations (all while living IN LONDON) — later told me that in this weather, it's best to just keep the fondant figurines small so they'll dry out faster and won't wilt. I wish I'd had that conversation with her earlier.

But then I remembered her telling me that she'd made a Spiderman cake for her twin sons recently and asked her how she managed that. As it turns out, she ended up making little fondant buildings and streets and then sticking a plastic Spidy figurine in the centre of it all. "If I'd made a fondant Spiderman," she said, "the black webs on his mask and costume would have streaked, and he would have to be lying down playing dead."

She'd also left the air-conditioning on for four days straight so that the cake wouldn't melt and die. Next time someone asks for a large fondant covered cake, I'm going to suggest a Dali theme.