Bergamot and Olive Oil Cake

I love cakes.. and adore Bergamots..

When I found the first Bergamots in the market I immediately bought a few to start building wonderful recipes with them..
They are of my favorite citrus fruit, with a sour but flavorful juice and a rind so heavenly aromatic that it almost hurts you when you smell it...

Was looking for a recipe using bergamot that had a mediterranean feel to it. And also a recipe that has a little something, a twist if you like.

I love cakes especially with olive oil as they are juicy and aromatic and also have a nice crumb. So, to enhance that I wanted to exchange some of the flour in the recipe with fine semolina... Also I figured that in order to take it a step further to add some almond flour as well so that it has even more flavour. Citrus and Almonds go hand in hand... If you add to that the olive oil it is a combination made in heaven but it needed a little bit more so I took a stroll in the garden and got some fresh thyme... and thought I should add it to the cake. And was soooo happy that I did in the end.

And it also needed something extra after baking. I could have made a syrup and dunked the whole cake in it but thought that it was a bit too much so I decided to make something between a glaze and a syrup and brush my cake with that...

So here are the ingredients and method for you!

Diffuculty: 2 of 3

Duration:1 hour baking and 20 minutes prep

Serves:12

Ingredients

For the cake

300 g of cake flour and 2 tblsp for flouring the pan

160 g fine semolina

60 g almond flour (if hard to find use regular flour)

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp baking soda (not full sp.)

1 tsp salt

400 g plain sugar

grated rind of 2-3 bergamots

60 g bergamot juice

4 tsp. finely chopped fresh thyme

140 g of extra virgin olive oil

4 medium eggs

300 g Greek strained Yogurt

For the glaze

2 tblsp. Bergamot juice

1 tblsp Gin or Tsipouro

2 tsp honey

40 g powdered sugar

Method

For the cake

Preheat the oven at 160 C fan forced.

In a bowl we mix the flour, semolina, almond flour, baking powder and baking soda and finally salt. Mix well with a whisk for the levening agents to get perfectly incorporated in the mixture.

In another bowl we put the sugar, bergamot rind and we work the mixture with our hands for a minute.. this way the sugar gets the aromatic oils from the bergamot rind and will give a more even aroma to the cake.

Add the juice and mix it all up with a spoon till it resembles wet sand.

Mix the olive oil and the thyme and add it to the sugar. Mix well.

Add the eggs one by one and only add the next egg when the previous one has been absorbed by the mixture.

Incorporate the flour mix and yogurt next. The flour mix in three parts and yogurt in two parts adding them alternatively starting and finishing with the flour.

Mix well before each addition.

Butter and flour a 28 cm wide round cake pan.

Add the mixture in and bake for 50 minutes to an hour till a knife inserted in the cake batter comes out clean.

Leave the cake in the pan for 10 minutes after you remove it from the oven, then remove from the pan and let it cool down on a rack.

For the glaze

While the cake is in the oven mix the glaze ingredients and brush the glaze all over the cake while it is still warm.

Serve with slices of Bergamot boiled in a 1:1 water sugar syrup and some more chopped fresh thyme.