Chocolate Olive Oil Cake, the Healthy Recipe You Need

This elegant Chocolate Olive Oil Cake is the easiest, most delicious way to get a hit of chocolate on a whim. Because you already have (almost) all the ingredients, requires only one bowl, it will become a go-to chocolate recipe in your kitchen! Shall we?

This Chocolate Olive Oil Cake is a variation of one of, like, three dessert recipes I actually bake All. The. Time. In fact, the only other recipes for baked goods I make are essentially variations on Olive Oil Cake—links to those recipes included below—and of course, banana bread. At some point I will come full circle and bake an olive oil banana bread.

Jump to:

• What is Olive Oil Cake?
• Is This the Kylie Jenner Olive Oil Cake?
• Does the Cake Taste Like Olive Oil?
• Why Use Olive Oil vs Butter in Baking
• Is Chocolate Olive Oil Cake Healthy
• Ingredients You Need for Chocolate Olive Oil Cake
• What Kind of Olive Oil for this Cake
• Additional Ingredients Notes and Resources
• How to Make Chocolate Olive Oil Cake
• Can You Use Different Cake Pans or Sizes to Bake Olive Oil Cake?
• Ingredients Substitutions and FAQs
• Olive Oil Cake Variations and More Recipes
• Wine Pairing for Chocolate Olive Oil Cake
• Chocolate Olive Oil Cake Recipe

What is Olive Oil Cake?

An Olive Oil Cake is a cake made with, wait for it, olive oil as the primary fat component as opposed to butter or another vegetable oil.

Because olive oil is a liquid, an Olive Oil Cake comes together in one bowl without having to wait to soften butter, or wear out your forearms to beat butter and sugar. The cake bakes as a single layer in a cake pan or a loaf pan. This is why Olive Oil Cakes are my favorite to make. Dump. Stir. Bake.

Other ingredients like a dairy component (milk, buttermilk, yogurt) and eggs sometimes, but not always, make an appearance for texture and aid in leavening. The simple blending method is forgiving so it's easy to stir in additional flavors in the form of herbs, spices, and chocolate.

• Chocolate Olive Oil Cake, the recipe on this post!
• Lemon Olive Oil Cake is the lemon version of this cake, dairy-free and baked in an 8-inch round pan
• Orange Olive Oil Cake is an eye-catching "upside down" version that has sunny slices of orange baked into the bottom of an 8-inch round pan
• Rosemary Olive Oil Cake with Candied Rosemary recipe, dairy-free, baked in 8-inch round cake pan

Olive Oil Cakes are usually not overly sweet, so they do best served without a sugary, heavy frosting. In the spring and summer, keep it light with just a dusting of confectioner's/powdered sugar and fresh berries. Later in the summer, super juicy ripe stone fruits like cherries, nectarines, peaches and plums are the perfect pairing. In the fall and winter, make it a little richer and serve individual slices with a dollop of whipped cream or yogurt and poached apples or pears.

The cake is generally thought of as a dessert from the Mediterranean cuisines, in which olive oil plays an important role in food and culture. The first time I ever tasted olive oil cake was in an Italian restaurant. I was hooked because unsurprisingly, it was "not too sweet."

Is This the Kylie Jenner Olive Oil Cake?

That viral tiktok Olive Oil Cake that Kylie Jenner (in)famously cut into weird shapes was a plain, not chocolate, olive oil cake made by a Los Angeles bakery that is unfortunately no longer around.

If you'd like to try making the Kylie Jenner tiktok olive oil cake, make the Lemon Olive Oil Cake. The recipe is the closest, down to the dusting with confectioner's sugar and rosemary garnish. Minus the celebrity's shock-value cutting method, of course.

Does the Cake Taste Like Olive Oil?

This cake does not taste like olive oil, per se. Unless you use an olive oil that's intensely aromatic with either grassiness or pepperiness, the olive oil flavor in the final cake will not stand out. This cake will taste like chocolate, with an underlying brightness from the olive oil. Someone who doesn't know the exact ingredients that go into the cake wouldn't be able to tell you it was olive oil, but there would be something unrecognizable they couldn't quite identify, similar to what umami does in savory dishes.

Why Use Olive Oil vs Butter in Baking

Aside from the fact that the two ingredients have very different flavor profiles, olive oil and butter render final products with different textures. Olive oil cakes are denser and moister, and stay that way for much longer than cakes made with butter.

The extra moisture from olive oil balances the chocolate in the cake. Chocolate is tannic, a characteristic that has a "drying" effect in the mouth similar to the tannic quality of red wine and tea.

Generally speaking, olive oil is considered a healthier fat choice over butter because of its omega-3 content, making an olive oil cake a more appropriate choice for people with certain health and dietary needs. However, cakes and other baked goods, even with olive oil, may have other ingredients like sugar, wheat flour, eggs, and dairy, that affect the nutrient density of the final dish. Which brings us to...

Is Chocolate Olive Oil Cake Healthy

Let's not kid ourselves here. A chocolate olive oil cake is still a cake. That being said, there are nutritional factors that can make an Olive Oil cake a healthi-er choice over other types of cakes for different health and dietary needs.

Cocoa is labeled "healthy" because it is considered a good source of certain class of antioxidants called flavanols. Cocoa has about 380 different flavanols (source: National Institute of Health) and other phytonutrients that have been researched for their potential health benefits. According to research at the National Institute of Health, "dark chocolate or standardized cocoa supplements or drinks can modestly lower blood pressure and improve blood cholesterol and the health of blood vessels in adults. And some longer term observational studies have found that those who eat more cocoa might have a lower risk of certain cardiovascular diseases." (quote: New York Times)

Olive oil can be a healthier choice than a cake made with butter for people looking to tip the balance of their fat intake toward omega 3 fatty acids. It depends on personal health and dietary needs

This particular recipe for Chocolate Olive Oil Cake is also dairy-free. As a quick note, almost all of the Olive Oil Cake recipes I've shared so far are dairy-free, and it's partially by design because as a single, childless woman, I don't usually keep milk, buttermilk or even yogurt on hand. If you're careful about consuming animal fats that are present in dairy, then olive oil is a better choice than butter.

Ingredients You Need for Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

Because this Olive Oil Cake is something I spontaneously decide to make on some random Thursday afternoon (usually as a way to procrastinate, surprise, surprise), I want to be able to bake it right away without having to go to the grocery store to buy additional ingredients. I almost always have flour in the freezer as well as sugar because it doesn't go bad. Of course, I always have cocoa powder, olive oil, and eggs. Here is a list of the ingredients you need:

• Cocoa powder
• Hot coffee or espresso
• Olive oil, obviously!
• Vanilla Extract
• Eggs
• Flour
• Sugar
• Salt
• Pantry leaveners like baking powder and soda

These are optional ingredients for topping and garnishing the finished cake:

• confectioner's sugar
• fresh blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, or other seasonal fruit
• chocolate curls (here's how to make your own chocolate curls)

What Kind of Olive Oil for this Cake

The point of this Chocolate Olive Oil Cake is the olive oil, so use the best-tasting (to you) extra virgin olive oil you can afford. Though the flavor of the oil will be subtle in the final cake, it's best to go with extra virgin for quality, and an olive oil on the deeper, fruitier side rather than on the intense, peppery side. 

Avoid using "light" olive oil for this cake, which refers to the oil's flavor and color, not the calories. Light olive oil has been processed which makes it more suitable for cooking at high heat, but also results in fewer nutrients.

I like this California-grown olive oil, but it's also VERY expensive, so I am saving that for times when I am eating straight olive oil like as a dip for bread, and using this mild, organic olive oil for the cake.

Additional Ingredients Notes and Resources

1. Cocoa Powder: For this Chocolate Olive Oil Cake and any and all other chocolate products that come out of my kitchen, I use organic, unsweetened natural cocoa powder. Make sure it's cOcOA powder, not cAcAO powder. Both cocoa powder and cacao powder come from the cacao plant, but cocoa powder is made from beans roasted at a higher temperature so it's a little more palatable. Cacao powder is made from beans roasted at a lower temperature, so it's more bitter, but retains more of the nutritional content. Cocoa powder usually costs less than cacao powder.
2. Coffee or Espresso. If you have a well-stocked home bar, you might have some kind of coffee-based liqueur like Bailey's or Kahlua. Those are perfectly fine substitutes 1:1 ratio for the regular coffee or espresso in the recipe. See below for how to incorporate an alcohol-based substitute into the recipe.
3. Flour. You can use any form of wheat flour for Chocolate Olive Oil Cake. I used this brand of organic, unbleached, all-purpose flour. I have made this cake with half whole wheat flour and as expected, it works perfectly well.
4. All other fresh herbs and produce from either the Santa Monica Farmers' Market on Wednesday, or Whole Foods Market when I can't find what I need at the farmers' market.

How to Make Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

Tools and Equipment for Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

There isn't any special tool or piece of equipment required for Chocolate Olive Oil Cake, and in fact, I highly encourage you to skip hauling out heavy stand mixers, or even a hand mixer for this. However, that doesn't mean there are a couple of things that might make this cake easier than it already is to get from pantry to plate.

• 9-inch round springform pan. The recipe here specifies a 9-inch springform pan and it's the one I used because that's the type of pan I have that's the right volume. You can absolutely use a regular round cake pan with minimum 2-inch high sides that's well-greased and lined with parchment paper to make removal easy. You can also use other shaped pans, see below in the FAQ.
• Parchment paper to release the bottom of the cake without ripping off any of the orange slices.
• Glass mixing bowls
• Whisk
• Spatula
• Sifter

Can You Use Different Cake Pans or Sizes to Bake Olive Oil Cake?

• Can You Use a Different Size Cake Pan to Bake the Cake? Yes! Because this Olive Oil Cake is so forgiving, you can use slightly different sized and shaped pans. A slightly smaller 8-inch round cake pan with 2-inch high sides will yield a taller cake, and needs to bake for a longer time. Check the cake at 40 minutes.
• Can You Cake the Cake in a Square Pan? Yes! Use an 8x8-inch square pan with sides that are at least 2-inches high. A 9x9-inch square pan is actually a lot bigger than a 9-inch round pan, so if you do use a 9-inch square pan, the cake will spread out more into a thinner/flatter cake. Bake a 9-inch square for a shorter period of time, i.e. start checking the cake for done-ness at 30 minutes.
• Can You Bake the Cake in a Loaf Pan? Yes! In an 8-inch loaf pan, bake the cake for a little longer. The cake will have a slightly crunchier "crust" because it's in the oven for longer to bake through to the center, but hey, it's still cake.

Ingredients Substitutions and FAQs

The recipe for this cake is called "fool-proof" because it is fairly forgiving in terms of ingredients and measurement precision. Here are the pro-tips:

• Different Type of Flour? You can use any form of wheat flour for Chocolate Olive Oil Cake. This brand of organic, unbleached, all-purpose flour is the one I use. I have made this cake with half whole wheat flour and as expected, it works perfectly well. For gluten-free flours... glad you asked! See next...
• Can You Make it Gluten-free? Yes! Two baking-ready gluten-free flours my gluten-free experts friends have recommended are Measure-for-Measure by King Arthur and Pamela's, both of which you can substitute into recipes 1:1.
• Can You Make it Vegan? If you replace the eggs with an appropriate plant-based egg substitute, the cake will be vegan. That being said...
• Can you Replace the Eggs? I have not yet personally made this Chocolate Olive Oil Cake with an egg substitute, either store-bought or something like ground flaxseeds as a "flax egg." If you do, please let me know how it turns out!
• Can You Substitute Out the Olive Oil? The point of this cake is olive oil. If you want to use a different oil or melted butter, make a different cake. (That being said, you can absolutely substitute another oil or melted butter in this recipe, it will generally have the same texture, but just taste different.)
• Bailey's or Kahlua? You can absolutely use a coffee-based or coffee-adjacent liqueur in place of the hot coffee or espresso in the recipe. Heat the liqueur for a few minutes either on the stovetop without letting it boil, or in the microwave for about 30 seconds, then proceed with the recipe to bloom the cocoa.

Olive Oil Cake Variations and More Recipes

If you, like me, hoard olive oil by the half gallon jugs but can't remember the last time you bought actual dairy butter—it was probably back during Thanksgiving tbh—olive oil cakes will be your go-to cake. Try these variations on Olive Oil Cake.

• Lemon Olive Oil Cake is the lemon version of this cake, dairy-free and baked in a round pan
• Orange Olive Oil Cake is an eye-catching "upside down" version that has sunny slices of orange baked into the bottom of an 8-inch round pan
• Rosemary Olive Oil Cake with Candied Rosemary recipe, dairy-free, baked in 8-inch round cake pan
• Walnut Olive Oil Cake with Fresh Figs, dairy-free, made with half of the regular wheat flour replaced with "walnut flour".

And yes, I love Olive Oil Cakes, why do you ask?

Wine Pairing for Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

The general rule for pairing wine with dessert is to pour a wine that has the same intensity and the equivalent if not slightly more sweetness. Pairing wine with chocolate requires a little extra consideration because chocolate has tannins, the compound that give both it and wine that bitter, slightly drying taste. For example, Cabernet Sauvignon is generally more tannic so it might be a little too overwhelming to pair with chocolate.

In the case of chocolate, a sweet, fortified wine like Port (Portugal), Madeira (Spain), sherry, and vin santo (Italy) will almost always work as a pairing. Late harvest red wines also work. These are wines that taste sweet enough to be served alone as a dessert wine. Here are some current favorite recommendations:

• Piedrasassi in Santa Barbara makes a sangiovese-based vin santo, available via mailing list.
• Quady Wines, sweet and dessert wine specialist based in Central California, produces a Port-style wine as well as a sweet Black Muscat wine.

You could also use these wines to substitute for some or all of the coffee/espresso in the recipe!