Lemon, Olive Oil and Blackberry Loaf Cake with Elderflower – a classic light lemon cake studded with fresh blackberries and scented with fruity olive oil and a spring time elderflower glaze. Jump to Recipe
A preface: you may have noticed (if you aren’t running an ad-blocker already) that there are now advertisements on this site. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about them – to sum it up, I am a student with minimal income, and the costs of running The Brick Kitchen add up – ingredients, photography equipment, website hosting and more. Having ads is a way to generate passive income to help my blog to pay for itself. However, I am acutely aware that we are all constantly bombarded with targeted advertising, and it does feel uncomfortable to let that invade my tiny corner of the internet. Am I selling out? I don’t know. At this point it is a work in progress and any and all opinions are welcome. If you do feel like they ruin your experience or are particularly obtrusive, please do let me know.
Currently: a few thousand metres in the air, somewhere between London and Barcelona. Mood: bittersweet (is that a mood?). Term time in Oxford is officially over – though I still have work to do, the town has emptied out (replaced quickly by summer tourist groups) and friends have departed for internships and holidays. It’s gone miles too fast, put it that way. Looking the other direction, the next few weeks have been obsessively google mapped out in pastries, coffees, tapas and spaghetti – Barcelona then Italy. Committed enough that yesterday I suffered the slight humiliation of attempting phone reservations in Rome with minimal, extremely mangled Italian (they put someone who spoke English on the phone very, very quickly). All the action will be over on my instagram stories if you want to follow along (i.e. watch me eat my weight in pizza and pinxtos with the odd side of the Colosseum or Park Guell). And if anyone has any must-see/do/eat tips for Barcelona, Florence, Rome, Cinque Terre or Venice, please send them through!
This lemon, olive oil and blackberry loaf cake with elderflower kind of sums up the last few weeks in Oxford. Filled with lazy picnics in Port Meadow – the kind where hot afternoons slide into evening sunsets over the river, and hours go by while flies circulate overhead and pots of hummus, carrots and beers (great combo I know) litter the prickly grass. Elderflower, new to me but ubiquitous over here, lines the riverbanks – and how could I not combine it with lemon after Claire Ptak’s triumph of a royal wedding cake?! Glorious summer berries have also hit the markets and I only wish I had the time to do them more justice than demolish them fresh from the carton. In a small shared kitchen, anything complex is out of the question.
It’s a simple loaf based on a classic lemon yogurt cake I’ve been making since I can remember, scrawled out on an oil stained recipe card. It taught me to butter and flour a ring tin and how to test a cake for done-ness, and was regularly made for afternoon teas, dusted with icing sugar. I can’t find the exact origins but it seems fairly common in New Zealand especially, differing slightly to a similar Ina Garten recipe. Here I’ve given it a 2018 English summer update: swapping the vegetable oil for fragrant extra-virgin olive oil, studding it with ripe blackberries and adding a fragrant drippy elderflower glaze. It’s a hard cake to get wrong, kept moist by the yogurt and oil, and can be made from start to finish in a food processor. The photographs aren’t my usual, but they’re all I’ve got – I took them in a rush on the pavement outside the kitchen before packing it up into my bike basket and cycling down to the lawns for a picnic.
- 1 1/2 cups caster sugar (330g)
- peeled rind of 2 lemons
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup olive oil
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup natural yogurt (250g)
- 2-3 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 cups flour (250g)
- 3 tsp baking power
- 250-300 g blackberries
- 1 cup icing sugar (100g)
- elderflower cordial, 1 tsp at a time
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Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease and line a large 9x13cm loaf tin. You can also make this in a 24cm ring or bundt tin, or a 23 cm round tin.
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In a food processor, blitz the sugar and lemon rind until the rind is finely chopped through the sugar and it is fragrant (if you don’t have a food processor, finely zest the lemon rind before mixing into the sugar)
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Add eggs, oil and salt and blend to combine.
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Blend in the yogurt and lemon juice.
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Add flour and baking powder and process only just enough to mix.
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Pour half the cake mix into the prepared loaf tin. Dot with half the blackberries. Repeat with the remaining cake mix. If your loaf tin is on the small side and you feel like it is getting too full, reserve some cake mix and bake a cupcake or two with it - my loaf tin coped but only just.
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Bake for 1hr - 1 hr 15 min, until it bounces back to touch and a skewer comes out just clean. Leave to cool in the tin.
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Invert onto a rack and top with elderflower glaze.
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Add elderflower cordial to the icing sugar, 1 tsp at a time, until you get a thick white glaze.
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Pour over the loaf and use the back fo a spoon or an offset spatula to spread over the edges in drips.
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Decorate with fresh elderflowers
This looks like everything I want to eat rn – olive oil, berries, elderflower – oh my! I totally understand your hesitation with ads. I haven’t taken the plunge with them yet, but I totally would if I needed to financially – no judgement!
Thanks Alanna! It’s spring personified. Also glad to here I’m not the only one on the fence re ads – ah it is such a tricky one
We loved Coquinarius in Florence, it was a fabulous place with great local food. The mixed starter was very much enjoyed by my family as well as the pici pasta. I couldn’t recommend it more highly. Also, Emiko Davies’ blog has great tips for the area. Have fun
Thanks Louise! I had an amazing time in Florence – checked out lots of Emiko Davies’ recommendations, thank you! <3
This looks INCREDIBLE! We’re also going to Barcelona, Rome & Cinque Terre soon — too funny! Let me know if you have any good recs to share!
Hi Sonja – great minds haha! Will be putting a post up on Barcelona and Rome soon, but definitely email or message me – I have lots of recommendations now for all three places! x
After seeing this on Instagram earlier this week, I just can’t seem to get it out of my head. Truly a summer dream…
Thanks Todd! Wish I could send you some
1. Very jealous of that travel list right there! 2. I really don’t bake enough loaf cakes and now I’m questioning everything – the elderflower is such a unique delicious addition and I particularly love how pretty this cake is as an inverted loaf!
Thank you!! Loaf cakes are my absolute favourite – so easy to make look pretty, and I find they are also harder to overcook. x
This loaf is just gorgeous! Here in Virginia, elderflower is tough to come by unless you grow it yourself. For now, I’ll content myself with your dreamy pictures and imagine that perfectly flower flavor. Enjoy your travels! That sounds like an incredible itinerary.
Thank you!! I’d never really come across elderflower before this spring in the UK, so it’s been lovely to try. Will do! x
to be honest I hate the ads I think they detract from the aesthetic of your site, which is clean and bright and uncluttered. Ads are the reason I don’t look at a whole lot of blogs now like butter and brioche, I think they are too distracting. But I appreciate that you need funds and advertising might help out with that – running a blog aint cheap. At the end of the day it is your blog and you need to take it in whatever direction you think is best.
Also stunning cake!
Thank you – it is such a tough one, I’m totally with you on feeling like they make it look cluttered and take away from the nice white spaces between photos. I’m planning on seeing how it goes for another month or two then making a call.. thanks for the feedback though!
I am figuratively dying of envy at the moment with of all your beautiful Rome instagrams! I would love to see some of your recommendations please x
Also I am inawe that you have been able to keep up blogging while you are travelling you are putting me to shame haha. The ads may just be a necessary part of the blogging process – out of curiosity do you know if they generate much in the way of revenue? Or is that a question you are not supposed to ask?
Oh thank you! Have been having an absolute blast in Italy, such good food. Will definitely put up a blog post about Rome, and if you are heading anywhere else let me know and I’ll send some though! Ah am seriously struggling to keep up blogging while travelling to be honest, so much less than I would like to. The motivation to sit down and write/edit photos is very low haha. Also would love to make a trip up to Edinburgh sometime in August if you are around at all? Would be fun to meet in real life!
Also re the ads – they do generate decent revenue – if they didn’t I wouldn’t do it haha. I probably wouldn’t bother if I had a full time job, but since I don’t it is probably worth it at the moment!
Also, forgot to mention how much I love that the photos were taken outside on the pavement! Haha if you hadn’t of said I would never have guessed they look fab!!
Thank you!! Got some very strange looks taking the photos haha
Hey there Claudia!
The photos are gorgeous! I still cannot believe you shot these on the ground! As for the ads, I just wanted to say that they are very minimal and not intrusive. I have visited blogs that were literally plastered with ads, seriously it was if the website had a disease! Anywho, I always make a point to let people know when their ads are done in a tasteful manner (as yours are) . Hope you have a wonderful day!
Lillian
Lemon, Olive Oil and blackberry cake is something i can not get over since long. elderflowers glaze gave it a new impact. Thank yo[u for sharing this with us. it was soft and delicious.
Hello,
Very keen to make this cake but just a couple of questions:
1. The weight of 2 cups of flour is noted as 250 grams, however in Australia 1 cup of flour is 150 grams.
Is the 250 grams an error or that is the measurement you bake with?
2. Can I substitute raspberries for blackberries? If so, do I need to adjust any other ingredients e.g. the amount of lemon juice or zest?
3. what is the texture of the cake – dense and wettish with 1 cup of yogurt and 1 cup of oil, or a light, moist texture?
Many thanks,
Angela