Campari Citrus Olive Oil Cake 🍊

OMGosh is this decade-old tumblog turning into a cooking/baking diary?! I sure hope so!!!

I made Melissa Clark’s Campari Olive Oil Cake as part of the Never Ending Salon bakeoff last weekend and have been slowly savoring it all week with a scoop of my *homemade yogurt* plopped on top.

It’s a very grownup cake. It’s nowhere near as sweet as yellow cake but still has that classic spongey bounce. There is some really beautiful bitterness that comes through with the citrus juice and zest that’s in the batter, along with the Campari, of course. 

I’ll be honest, I’ve never baked anything from scratch successfully before and was like “this is definitely going to taste like a sandy rock” as I was mixing it together by hand into a very liquid-y batter. You know, a self-defeating attitude is never nice, but having low expectations means that this 5-star end result completely knocked my socks off. 

Eating at room temperature is actually better than serving it warm. Having it an hour or two after it came out of the oven was like “wow… this is quite rich” and cooling to room temperature really dials that buttery, oily factor way down.

Also, I didn’t make the Campari glaze from the recipe, though I’m sure the pink color would’ve made it look very pretty. You know what though, I don’t need extra sugar on top of my sugar! It’s really good just the way it is.