Olive oil cake with mascarpone and figs

Making the olive oil cake – 1 hour

Pre-heat the oven to 160 degrees celsius and coat a spring form with butter or olive oil. Line the bottom with parchment paper and optionally coat the sides with a thin layer of flour.

Mix egg along with sugar, honey and zest of 1 lemon for a few minutes in the bowl of your standmixer until it's fluffy. Combine flour with baking powder, salt and (dried) lavender and gradually add this to the egg mixture.

Then also gradually add the olive oil and crème fraîche and mix until you've reached a smooth batter. Divide the batter over the spring form and bake for about 40 minutes to an hour, the exact baking time depends on your oven.

The cake is done when a wooden skewer comes out clean. Let the cake cool off completely.  

Finishing the olive oil cake with mascarpone and figs – 45 minutes

When the cake is cooling down, you can make the fig sauce. Rinse the fresh figs, remove the stems and coarsely chop half of them. Divide the other half of the figs into quarters for garnish and set them aside.

Add the coarsely chopped figs along with balsamic vinegar, juice of half a lemon, honey and a teaspoon of (dried) lavender to a small pan and heat this for about 15 minutes.

As soon as the figs are beautiful softened, you can use an immersion blender to create a sauce. Let the sauce cool off and meanwhile roast the almond shavings in a dry skillet and set them aside.

Whip the cream until it's thick but still a bit runny, sort of like the thickness of yogurt. Combine cream cheese and mascarpone along with the honey.

Don't whip it too long, otherwise the mascarpone will become runny. Combine whipped cream with the mascarpone-cream cheese mixture and set aside.  

Divide the cake into two using a large bread knife and divide 3/4th of the fig sauce over the bottom. Divide half of the mascarpone topping on top of the fig sauce and place the second half of the cake on top.

Divide the rest of the mascarpone topping over the cake and also add the rest of the fig sauce. Finish with the quarters of fresh figs and almond shavings. Enjoy!