Chocolate olive cake with sea salt

We are forever in search of the perfect chocolate cake recipe and without wanting to get you too excited, we are pretty sure this is it. The combination of the chocolate and olive oil gives this cake such a rich, moistness that you often don’t get with chocolate cake. In addition, the olive oil secretly enhances the flavour of the chocolate, you’ll want to eat the entire thing in one sitting.

Ingredients

• 50 g good quality cacao powder
• 125 ml boiling water
• 1 tsp vanilla bean extract
• 75 g dark chocolate 70%, chopped into small chunks
• 100g ground almonds or hazelnuts
• 75g self-raising flour
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp Neolea pure sea salt
• 175 ml Neolea extra virgin olive oil
• 175 g soft brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• Crème fraiche to serve

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 175 C.
• Add the cacao powder to a bowl and whisk in the boiling water until smooth. Add the vanilla bean paste, stir and set aside until cool.
• In another bowl add all the dry ingredients and stir everything together.
• Whisk together the olive oil, sugar and eggs in a large bowl until pale and fluffy, this takes 2-3 minutes. You can use a stand mixer or electric whisk if you prefer but by hand works just fine.
• Pour the chocolate mixture into the oil and egg mixture and whisk through, taking care not to knock all of the air out.
• Add the dry ingredients and fold through with a spatula.
• Finally, stir in the chopped chocolate.
• Pour the cake batter into a lined loaf tin and bake for 45-50 minutes, until firm on top and a skewer comes out clean.
• Take the cake out of the oven and leave to cool completely before removing it from the tin.
• Sprinkle the top with some Neolea pure salt flakes and serve in thick slices with a dollop of crème fraiche.