I'd never had an olive oil dessert until Matthew made this Olive Oil Cake. When he brought up the idea I was very hesitant. I couldn't imagine how it could taste good, let alone delicious. But, with my first bite of this olive oil cake I fell in love. If you know me at all you know one of my favorite foods is corn bread, and if you don't, now you do. This olive oil cake tastes like corn bread heaven! It's moist, dense and subtly sweet.
Cooking With Olive Oil
I find olive oil to have a very strong taste so I never even considered baking with it. Little did I know that olive oil is a great ingredient to use in cakes and breads, and is often done so by prominent chefs! It was Matt who decided that we should make an olive oil cake, even against my word, and I'm glad he didn't listen to me. The cake came out dense and delicious, and the olive oil wasn't too over powering. This olive oil cake has become my new favorite dessert and I know it will become yours too.
Low Carb Pound Cake
Given the dense, pound cake-like quality of this recipe you would expect the nutrition to be a lot worse. But, in fact, the low carb and high fat nutrition is one of the best parts! It came out of the oven and the first bite I took I instantly thought to myself 'pound cake'. Growing up I always had the same debate with my best friend, pound cake or angel food cake? She loved angel food cake and I couldn't stand it one bit. I always was and continue to be a pound cake kinda girl! If you want to serve it at a party or a holiday event the perfect addition would be a sugar glaze coating the top and eventually soaking into the cake. Yum!
Olive Oil Cake
Although it's the first olive oil baked good we've made, it's definitely not the first cake. If you're looking for a cake or are a fan of having dessert in the house at all times (like us!), then we suggest giving our Protein Cake or Cream Cheese Bread a try. But, if you're like me, and have never baked with olive oil you should go straight to baking this olive oil cake first.
Recipe can be quickly added to MyFitnessPal - Search "KetoConnect - Olive Oil Cake"
Olive Oil Cake
Ingredients:
- 1 cup olive oil
- 3/4 cup Coconut flour
- 3/4 cup Low Carb Sugar Substitute
- 6 large eggs
- 2 tsp Baking powder
- 1 1/4 tsp Baking Soda
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp Pink Himalayan Salt
Instructions:
- Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside.
- Beat eggs to 3 times the volume in another bowl.
- Add olive oil, and vanilla extract to eggs and combine.
- Slowly add the dry ingredients into the wet as you combine.
- Pour into a greased spring form pan (we used a 9 inch pan).
- Bake at 350 for 30 minutes (edges will have browned).
Notes
Written by
Megha Barot
Megha has always been a passionate cook, but she took this to a new level after starting her keo journey in 2015. She loves creating new recipes and producing educational content for KetoConnect, which she co-founded in 2016 with Matt. Her passion for healthy eating and personal development continues to thrive. She's the proud mom of two awesome kids.
For the Erythritol,do I use the Swerve granular or confectioner?
We used granular!
Can you substitue erythriitol for Xylitol and if so would it be the same amount?
You will need slightly less xylitol. Erythritol is 70% as sweet as xylitol.
Do you think this recipe would work as cupcakes?
I wonder if Avocado oil would work. . . .
It will!
Finally made this tonight. AMAZING!!! And super easy!!! Decided to try this after Megha said she couldn’t stop thinking about it on one of your IG LIve feeds! I’ve made some horrible mug cakes (not your recipe) so kinda gave up on finding a decent baked treat. Thank you for sharing this and all of your other recipes! I also appreciate all your recommendations after you trial recipes and products. Thank you for your hard work and dedication to KC! Julie O / IG: Juls_keto_journey
Yay!! Thanks for trying it and giving the approval 🙂
I halved this recipe and baked it in 4 little individual bundt pans. I baked them for 20 minutes but I think 15 would have been sufficient. I diced up a couple strawberries and added some low carb almond/coconut milk and had the best strawberry shortcake ever!!!
That sounds incredible!!!
I just had a piece of olive oil cake at work that someone brought in. I treated myself to a small sliver and ran straight to Pinterest to find a keto version…and here i am!
I can’t wait to try your recipe this weekend!!!!
Yay! Let us know how our recipe stacks up!
You guys are great! My wife and I are watching your unboxing video now. Wheres the meatstick!?
Haha, thank you! We were definitely sad to miss out on the meat stick.
Great recipe, perfect partner for my afternoon coffee. Thanks for sharing it
It is perfect for a nice afternoon coffee!
Hi, thanks for sharing this. I just made this last night and it came out amazing — a very nice but light pound cake kind of texture! I added the zest and juice of one lemon so it has a little citrus flavor to it, but I will add a little more zest next time just because I like the aroma of lemon in a pound cake. Thanks again for this wonderful recipe.
Looks great – what are you using for the white drizzle topping?
We combined swerve confectioner sugar and some milk/water.
Do you have a recommended amount to use for the drizzle topping?
I’m a huge cornbread junkie and with a Mother’s Day BBQ today, I made this! It was a huge hit that no one had ever had anything like before!
Note to others, I’m the laziest baker in the world. I had to hand beat the eggs and after maybe getting a little frothing going on, I called it quits. The cake still came out fantastic and moist!
Heck, I even went as far as overcooking it a little, and it was still incredibly moist and delicious! Seems rather foolproof to me!
The cake sounds like the perfect accompaniment for a BBQ!! Thanks for sharing the overcooking tip and it still coming out moist. Glad it was a hit and happy belated mothers day!
Do you think this could be made in a cast iron…. like cornbread…. while camping?
It should work pretty well. I’d be a little worried about it cooking evenly though. Are you planning on cooking it over a fire? That probably wouldn’t work since there would be no oven-like effect to actually cook the cake through.
I have baked this incredible cake in a 10″ cast iron skillet several times and it is much better than any other pan I’ve used. It is crusty like corn bread and is very evenly cooked. Everyone thinks it is the best cake ever.
I am so glad to hear the cast iron pan works that’s how I use to make cornbread and I was wondering about it as I read through the comments.
This will be made this week part will be used like cornbread and part with the glaze!
I tried this with a smaller spring form pan (6 inch) …and while it came out looking beautiful the center was a gloppy mess. So, be careful if you change the pan size. The edible bits were yummy tho so I’m going to try again with the larger pan. My Cronometer shows the calories around 350 tho.
I’m gonna try making this…!!! When I created the recipe in LoseIt! using ingredients from Trader Joe’s, the nutrition info was quite different, though. It came to 353 kcal, 33.5g fat, 6.8g protein, and 8.8-4.9=3.9g carbs per each eighth of the cake. :'( So not crazy, but still ~70 kcal more per slice.
We just recalculated it. Thanks for catching it!
HOLY CRAP!!! These are fantastic! I ran out of coconut flour and subbed 1/2 cup of almond flour and i also packed all of our cupcake pans in anticipation for our cross country move so i used cup cake tins and just cut the time to 20 minutes …. super duper delicious! They came out super moist. I think next time i am going to use really really good olive oil… ya know the “specialty” kind. I made the glaze with swerve confectioners and heavy cream and it’s fantastic. Just sweet enough to solve your sweet tooth but not so much its overpowering. Thank you Thank you thank you!!
i did the same thing, but do you know if each cupcake equals a slice? because i made the recipe and it came out with 12 cupcakes.
Googled keto glazes this morning and ended up using a brown butter glaze. This is one of my favorite keto treats I’ve made yet. Thanks!
Glad you liked it! The brown butter glaze sounds awesome. We just melted some butter and threw in some powdered sweetener.
Wow, this looks amazing! Can’t wait to try it, but I only have a cake shaped silicon thing. Would I need to change much about the amount or cooking time?
<3
I think you might need to cook it for slightly longer, but just monitor it as it gets towards the end. The edges should start getting brown as the middle gets to be fully cooked.
So, this looks amazing. But, the beat eggs to 3x… I don’t think my 3x is the same as yours. I made the brownies (again, amazing) but I think I over beat them, which made them crumbly. Since it’s come up a few times in recipes, could you elaborate in a separate post/ video? ?
Thank you!
Yes, we should go into that more. It should take about 2 minutes with a hand mixer. It might now quite be 3x volume but somewhere between 2x-3x.
If you divide the eggs, make meringue, then gently fold them into the combined wet ingredients, you’ll get better structure. All those air bubbles help lift the batter. With so many eggs and so much oil, this is basically a spin on old-school mayonnaise cake! 🙂
If they’re crumbly then try adding olive oil little by little, mixing and observing the batter, the eggs make the texture light and fluffy, not dry. If it’s crumbly, it’s dry and you can see it in the batter if it doesn’t keep it together.
This looks great and I’ll have to try it. What’s the glaze made with?
The glaze is just melted butter and swerve confectioners sugar.
I saw this reply and used melted butter with confectioners swerve. It was weird … very yellow compared to what it looks like in the picture. I then read some of the comments down lower and you said almond milk with swerve confectioners. Bingo, I bet that would have done the trick. Still an excellent cake. Best keto dessert we’ve ever tried…and I will do the glaze correctly next time.
Did you count the sweetener in the nutrition facts per serving? If not, how many carbs should we add to have total carbs? Thank you!
I agree. 0.75 cups is 36 tsp so 4.5 tsp per slice, or 18g carbs. Doesn’t seem to add up. Or google conversions are wrong…
This was my question, too. But I didn’t work out the math until AFTER eating one! I don’t know if the 3/4 cup of Erythritol was a typo, or what.
I made it, I love the texture. However, it is too sweet. Next time I will use half the erthyritol.
Erythritol doesn’t affect blood sugar level, so in low carb baking, it is not counted toward total carb.
It has a total of 55 carbs and per slice it’s 6.8 carbs. Sadly so much incorrect keto info in the post and comments I’m surprised how anyone is doing it effectively. Also you count net carbs….not just carbs. Whomever mentioned blood pressure is just confusing people and it’s also very incorrect. The recipe is even less if you half the coconut flour with almond meal. This is a horrid version of what an olive oil cake is sense a key ingredient in olive oil cake is the almond flour.
This recipe deducts sugar alcohol grams from total carb count. Total carbs and net carbs can be see in the nutritional information at the bottom!
So are you saying this Olive Oil cake should not be considered keto? Or has more carbs then what is detailed in the nutritional facts?
Love you two… I watch all the time…pets and house too..im inspired… Im half greek ..so i love this recipe..thank u
For the cake itself, can I substitute Stevia for erythritol? I have almond flour but not coconut flour. I hate the taste and smell of coconut, so have never tried it. Would almond work if I increased?
How did you make the sugar glaze?