Olive Oil Cake with Orange, Honey and Thyme

Update! After Christmas 2013, we had about 1-3/4 cup of wonderful pulp that I stored in a glass jar for a few week before baking three batches of Olive Oil Orange Cake. I made several batches in individual rose-shaped Bundts (they really look pretty and are great dessert sizes), and in several sizes of loaf pans. I found the timing for baking them very specific - the small Bundts only take about 18 minutes.

I used Leroux kitchen Blood Orange Extra Virgin olive oil and it was absolutely yummy. I also upped the pulp to a very generous 1/2 cup.

Original post: I scoured the web and searched high and low for a recipe that would make use of orange pulp from the 25 oranges we squeezed for our juice on Christmas morning. I was frustrated because there really wasn't much out there and several recipes that looked promising told me to boil a few oranges for two hours before pulverizing them in a food processor. This wouldn't really work because our oranges were already juiced. I did come across a promising one that I revised. I love honey, of course, and used a blend of three jars that were nearly used up.  I make my own fresh yogurt so had some on hand.  From the bowl of orange pulp I used enough of fresh juice and pulp to approximate one orange - about 4 T. wet pulp and 1 T. juice. I used the fresh zest of one orange. *Next year we'll have our own yogurt, honey AND olive oil because Rob and Beth gave us our own olive tree in Italy!

I made this again and increased the orange pulp.  You can beat the original five ingredients with an immersion blender.

Beat 3 large eggs until fluffy and add:
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup of sugar
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup yogurt and
1/2 cup pulp (plus the juice and zest from 1 orange (revised from original post)
Blend together and then mix in:
1-1/2 cups flour
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves, finely chopped
Preheat oven to 350 degrees - convection bake at 325 degrees. Pour into a pan - I used a 6-cake mini-bundt pan. Let cool 20 minutes, then remove to a plate. Glaze with a honey-orange glaze with orange zest or bottled orange peel and a tiny sprig of fresh thyme and fresh whipped, sweetened cream. Trader Joe's has a super-pasteurized whipping cream that stays out of the frig and on the shelf until you need it.