Grape Cake

By alas14

Ingredients

• 2 large eggs
• 2/3 cups sugar (use less if your grapes are on the sweet side–mine were quite tart), plus extra for finishing the cake
• 4 Tbsp melted butter
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup ground almonds (feel free to substitute flour here if you don’t have almonds, or even scale back the flour a bit and add more almond flour)
• 3/4 tsp baking power
• a pinch of salt
• zest of one lemon
• 2 cups flavourful grapes
• Equipment: a 9″ round cake pan

Preparation

Step 1

Butter and flour a cake pan, then set it aside. Preheat your oven to 350 F.

Beat the eggs and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer until they’re thick, about 3 minutes. Beat in milk, butter, oil, and vanilla.

Sift together the flour, almonds, baking powder and salt. Add the zest, tossing it to make sure it is well-distributed. Then stir the flour mixture into the wet ingredients, making sure it is well-combined. Allow this mixture to sit for 10 minutes to make sure the flour has absorbed the liquids.

Gently stir in 1 1/2 cups of grapes, then transfer the batter to your cake pan.

Bake on the middle rack for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, pull out your cake and top it with the reserved grapes. Sprinkle coarse granulated sugar overtop. Bake for about 40 more minutes, until the top of the cake is golden and springy. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan.