An Italian classic, this olive oil rosemary cake is perfect for breakfast, with coffee, or if you’re like me and don’t like overly sweet things, it makes a wonderful dessert. I added some pine nuts for crunch, too.

Olive oil cakes are a thing in Italy, where the oil takes the place of butter. They happen to be lower in saturated fat, if that matters to you, and one cool thing is that you can vary the flavor of the cake depending on what sort of olive oil you use. More on that in a bit.

This is, essentially, a sweet, cakey quick bread. It’s similar to, but lighter than, my recipes for persimmon nut bread and fig bread, which are other great options for not-so-sweet desserts or breakfasts.

Rosemary is traditional and an olive oil rosemary bread is a thing in Italy, but you could skip the rosemary and use another herb or another flavor element altogether. Other options:

• Summer savory, lemon verbena, mint, fresh marjoram or bee balm
• Citrus zest, especially lemon zest
• Candied citrus peel
• Pine nuts, chopped almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans or butternuts

Easiest Cake Ever

If you follow this site, you know I am not a professional baker. I like easy baking projects, and this is almost as easy as beer bread.

Basically you beat eggs with sugar, then beat in the remaining ingredients one by one until you get a batter. Pour batter into a loaf pan and pop it in the oven. Remove, let cool a bit, pop it out of the pan to cool some more, dust with powdered sugar and you’re done.

You can make an olive oil rosemary cake in less than an hour, start to finish.

Olive Oil in the Cake

The oil matters in an olive oil rosemary cake. First and foremost you want extra virgin. This is where you want to use the good stuff.

Next level is to use a late season olive oil, one made from very ripe olives in winter. These will be buttery, smooth and golden; you can see this in the cake pictures.

If you use an early season oil, one that’s peppery, strong and slightly bitter, it won’t ruin your cake, but it’s not ideal.

Can you use other oils? Absolutely. But use good ones, as the oil is the soul of this cake. Extra virgin canola oil would be good, as would unrefined nut or seed oils.

Duck fat? Yep, you can use duck or goose fat for this cake if you want. I’ve done it and it’s great.

What to Serve with Olive Oil Rosemary Cake

My preference is just a nice cup of coffee during the day, or a glass of sherry in the evening. For a dessert, preserved fruit would be nice, as would cheese.

Candied or chocolate covered nuts are another good choice, as is vanilla ice cream. If you are using pine nuts, as I do, you could do worse than serve an olive oil rosemary cake with pine nut ice cream.

Once made, the cake will keep, covered at room temperature, for a few days. It also freezes reasonably well.

If you liked this recipe, please leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating and a comment below; I’d love to hear how everything went. If you’re on Instagram, share a picture and tag me at huntgathercook.