Passionfruit, lemon and olive oil cake

Passionfruit, lemon and olive oil cake, otherwise known as sunshine in cake form. Jump to recipe here.

IIt’s difficult to believe it has been a year since my last post here – thank you to the friends who reminded me that the pear chocolate crumble had sat at the top of the homepage for too long. My only excuse is study. The physician exams I sat this year were undeniably harder than anticipated or could imagine. Everyone told us to expect the most challenging period of medical training we may ever face, but you still had to dive into it with the assumption that you’d be fine – or it would be too daunting to ever start. It already feels like there is very little choice in the matter: you’ve come this far, right? You got into medical school, you got through your university exams, you started working (which got easier and more satisfying), you found an area you loved with a future you could imagine, and this was just the mandatory next step on the road there. Unsurprisingly, studying full time on top of work drained a lot of the fun out of it. We are still sitting in the unfortunate anxious period of not having exam results yet, which is a black hole where every time you accidentally relive exam day you deduct another 10% from your imaginary mark. Best avoided if possible. Maybe I’ll look back at this with rosier tinted lenses on the other side!

When you’re exhausted it’s hard to have the emotional capacity or time to be creative, so baking went mostly by the wayside. I still cooked enough to feed myself – salmon dill and lemon risoni salads (a riff on this recipe) into too many tupperware containers, zucchini and melty goats cheese frittatas after work, eggplant tomato spaghetti dolloped with ricotta and showered in parmesan for pre-exam comfort. And it was friends who got me through it more than anything else: Lilli with home cooked Ottolenghi on the days I arrived home late and frazzled; Chloe for shared commiserations and study sessions over tubs of Luther’s scoops croissant and honey ice cream; Marnie for long run debriefs followed by butter drenched fruit toast (Wildlife is the winner); Anna and Eleanor with the frequent work escape long blacks; the best study group friends for pizza and wines and sharing the load – to name only a few. Mum and Dad always on the other end of the phone to listen.  

My window for complaints though is rapidly closing. I am typing this from a cafe in Paris (!), eating a slice of cherry studded clafoutis (from Gramme, would highly recommend), golden topped and densely creamy (and now at the top of my list to recreate next summer). I was lucky to get my mandatory 5 week block of annual leave now, after exams, so have joined the mass exodus of Australians and New Zealanders to sunnier climates. You can follow along over here for more of the holiday photographs if you like. 

In the meantime, this lemon, passionfruit and olive oil cake is pure sunshine in cake form. It’s zesty and fragrant, light and fluffy but still stays moist for days with both the yogurt and oil. It’s based on a cake we made when I was growing up frequently – the easiest one bowl people-pleasing cake in the repertoire with a side of nostalgia. The bundt tin allows a large capacity and means it cooks very evenly (it’s a versatile tin and makes the easiest afternoon tea cakes – would recommend if you don’t have one). Just make sure to grease your tin well and turn the cake out after about 5-10 minutes cooling time to ensure no sticking.