Olive oil cake and the importance of Middle Eastern olive oil

Olive oil cake is a typically Mediterranean cake, but I decided to swap the popular Mediterranean olive oils for a Middle Eastern one and this is why.

I love a good olive oil cake. The history of it is too hard to trace back, because it has probably been around for much longer than we think. Olive harvesting and the idea of using oil as a fat content in place of butter or lard seems more than obvious to me for any Mediterranean dessert, so I feel no one really knows how far back to attribute its origins. It seems like a cake that would most certainly have been the basic cake to make in ancestral times with a handful of ingredients that we now see as pantry staples. What we do know is that this isn’t a cake associated with the Middle East per se, and it certainly isn’t heralded by us either, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have our own versions as a result. However, let’s take it back to the olive trees. This one will rattle the boat, a little bit. For this cake you would typically find recipes that utilize Mediterranean products such as Italian, Greek, Spanish and even Moroccan olive oils, but looking at our ancestry and the first civilizations it is suspected that the first olive trees appeared in ancient Persia and Mesopotamia, which as you know by most of my writings is modern day Kurdistan and Iraq. Though some scholars do argue that its origins actually begin in ancient Egypt, later spreading to the Levant, and then to the eastern coastal areas much later on under the Roman and Greek empires, fast forwarding to modern-day Mediterranean oils. This is getting interesting now. Even for me. Call it the stars aligning, but I always find some root cause that associates with where I come from. We are, after all, descendants of the first civilization that graced this earth, and olive trees are some of the most ancient trees to exist. They are natures goodness from the beginning of time, giving us soap, fuel for oil lamps, medicines, rituals, skin care, even Aristotle’s birth control recommendation and so much more.

Olive oil cake is still rather underrated and, I believe, has only seen some sort of a resurgence within the last few years. I think it’s because some olive oil cakes can be so dense that it misses the mark. I add lemon and orange zests to my batter, breaking down the flavors, giving it some lightness and aroma. It should be a balance between dense, crumbly and just earthy enough thanks to good olive oil. Most recipes do call for some semolina flour as well as all-purpose, which I prefer, to give it that more crumbly texture, but tastier crust than what an only all-purpose cake would normally achieve. It also adds to the bite, as it has a slightly grittier texture, which uniquely offsets the density of the all-purpose flour. Semolina is more yellow in color when milled, therefore, giving it more character when you cut into it. There’s something about getting the base of this cake correct, and it’s not just down to the olive oil brand, it’s about the mixture itself.

If this cake doesn’t have all the correct balances, then it’s a bit doomed in texture and taste. Harsh, I know. However, you will often read that you need to use your best olive oil when it comes to making this cake, and they are not wrong. Skimping on the enriching fat can cost you an entire flavor. You’re sacrificing good taste. The same can be said for butter. Not all butter brands will give you the right fat balance and content when baking versus spreading on toast. It’s all a science, but testing and trialing with your brands is what it is all about. I have the same notes for tahini. Not all of them are good, to be honest more then half the brands out there actually suck. Sometimes my brutal honesty can come through and I hope you appreciate it. I would hate for your tahini sauces and hummus to suffer. The tricky part is understanding flavor, because sometimes you wouldn’t know what the good vs bad taste is, and that’s ok. I discuss tahini at length in my earlier posts. Taste comes with practice and being as open to trying as much in the outside world as you can to get a better idea, obviously traveling to the origin of place and eating from the source is most ideal. The same is to be said for olive oil. There should be three key tasting notes to a great extra virgin olive oil and that is a little bit of spice, a little bit of bitterness and a little bit of fruitiness. If you do not taste all three notes, then your olive oil is probably good enough for everyday use, but not for speciality recipes such as this. These notes are true for all olive oils, but when it comes to Middle Eastern oils you will not only notice the same notes, but that it is much earthier, more grassy and deeper in flavor and color. They are usually darker green in appearance, unlike its Mediterranean counterpart.

There are beautiful Mediterranean olive oils out there, but have you ever tried a Middle Eastern one? I’m prepared to hear no response whenever I ask, because it is almost inaccessible to find outside of the region and expensive. It is also highly unspoken about that most do not even realize we harvest olive trees in the mountainous and desert regions. Who can fault anyone for not wanting to readily drop $30 when you can find a decent Italian, Spanish or Greek one for much less. Our olive oils are hard to come by, and it does have to do with politics and land colonization to a certain extent, but it is mainly logistics. The logistics of getting to be a well-known product in an export market is difficult for us through good marketing, pricing and selling. We are not yet popularized enough, and have never been that the market is not ready to expand to include more of our brands, which continue to block the accessibility. It is not unobtainable, which is the good news, but it is not approachable enough nor well publicized for the non Middle Eastern to realize what we produce is just as beautiful and worthy as the more practical, popular regions out there. Fair trade organizations have made it their mission to include oils from the Levant, specifically Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon to name a few, but they come at a heavy price plus shipping. It takes much more research to find organizations and vendors that will sell most Middle Eastern olive oils abroad, but Palestine is one of the few Levant producers that is most accessible by fair trade at this stage. Here are some of my favorite organizations — Canaan Palestine, Playground for Palestine, Zaytoun UK.

If you are willing to pay the price to have a beautiful product to use for special occasions then it really will help expand this market very slowly, and that is something I hope to see in the near future. We are very much a part of the world’s olive oils. The first civilization - our ancestors - cultivated these magnificent trees from the beginning of time, for it to now solely be associated with the Mediterranean and North Africa.

Our trees have been around for thousands of years, whether from ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. That in itself is significance to our agriculture and ancestry. Though we do not necessarily carry family recipes of olive oil cakes, we certainly are an origin of the namesake oil and it would be amiss for me not to bake this cake with our own olive oils. To hoping we break out into the popular market one day.