My Favorite Things: Olive-Oil-Wine-Cake with Strawberries on Top

Let it be known that I'm kind of obsessed with Edible Santa Barbara. I always check the ATM stand at the farmers market to see if there's a new issue out that I can snag for free, and recently I was delighted to discover the new "Bread and Wine Issue." It included a whole bunch of inspired recipes, as usual, but I was intrigued by one in particular: wine cake, of course.

Olive-Oil-Wine-Cake with Strawberry-Pinot-Noir topping!

In addition to wine, the other main ingredient this cake recipe called for was olive oil. A whole lot of olive oil, since it was taking the place of butter in the recipe. Brown paper packages tied up with strings are okay, I guess, but wine, cake, and olive oil? These are a few of my favorite things!

For the olive oil, I headed straight to Il Fustino, one of Santa Barbara's best olive oil makers and vendors. The shop looks clean and inviting inside; the walls are lined with stainless steel containers of olive oils and balsamic vinegars, as well as all kinds of snacks and seasonings from local merchants. Each tank had a recipe suggestion for that type of olive oil for customers to take home!

"Il Fustino" means "The Tank" in Italian. Looks like this place got named during a game of I Spy (or "Io vedo," if you will).

I chatted with James Kirkley, whose dad, Jim, founded Il Fustino after working in the software industry for years. James's mom, Laura, does all the marketing for Il Fustino. James told me that all of their oils are grown in California and are certified to be Extra Virgin by the California Olive Oil Council.

Don't ask me what the Extra Virgin certification process entails, but I have to assume you sign up for it at Comic-Con.

I tasted a few of the oils right from the tank before settling on Olio Nuovo (which just means "new oil"), freshly pressed from the new Arbequina olive crop and unfiltered. It had a green tinge, smelled like newly cut grass, and tasted kind of peppery. James told me the peppery flavor was due to the polyphenols (antioxidants that reduce the risks of cancer and heart disease). This stuff was strong, but I figured if I was going to use olive oil in my cake, I wanted to taste it in the finished product.

Now it was time for the "wine" part of the wine cake operation. Unfortunately, I don't know of any local winemakers who produce Moscato, which the recipe called for, so I did the next best thing and purchased some at The Winehound, my favorite local wine shop. I told Bob, the least snobby wine connoisseur I've ever met, of my wine cake aspirations and he helped me pick out a good, inexpensive Moscato.

I also needed to buy some Pinot Noir for the strawberry topping, so I tried something new: "moobuzz" Pinot Noir by The Other Guys, Inc. in Monterery, CA (distance from me: 237 miles). "Moobuzz" is a cute reference to "The Land of Milk and Honey" - get it? Milk comes from cows, which go "moo," and honey comes from bees, which go "buzz!" How could I not buy this delightfully punny wine?

Here's the recipe, courtesy of Edible Santa Barbara, with my own twist:

Wine Cake

1 1/2 cups unbleached flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
1 cup unbleached organic cane sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup olive oil
3/4 cup dessert wine (I used Moscato)

For the glaze:
3 tablespoons Moscato
1/2 cup organic powdered sugar

For the topping:
1 pint strawberries
1 cup Pinot Noir
1/8 cup unbleached granulated sugar

First, I preheated the oven to 350 degrees. The directions said to lightly butter a 9- by 5-inch metal loaf pan and line the bottom and two longer sides with parchment paper. Well, there was about a 0% chance that I was in possession of any parchment paper, but luckily I had some really thin, paper crafty bags left over from my over-the-top Valentine's Day crafts-travaganza. I cut one along the edges and figured it made an okay substitute:

I combined the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl and put it aside. Then I was supposed to beat the eggs and sugar in a stand mixer, but since I don't just have a stand mixer lying around, I got a real arm workout in here. After I beat the eggs and sugar together, it was time to add the vanilla extract and olive oil (still mixing ferociously for about 5 minutes).

Before you judge me for not having a stand mixer, remember that I haven't had any weddings, so I don't have any of the standard wedding-gift-kitchen appliances like stand mixers, fondu sets, matching silverware, etc.

Then I got to open the Moscato - pop! - and I poured it into the bowl, alternating it with adding the dry ingredients little by little (still beating the crap out of the mixture by hand). I grumbled to David that we should get married soon for the sole purpose of acquiring a stand mixer. He laughed... and then ran away.

The wet ingredients with some bubbly Moscato!

While the cake baked, I got to work making the strawberry/wine topping! Yes, more wine. This one was simple: I just cut the strawberries in half and mixed them up in a bowl with the sugar, then poured the Pinot Noir over them.

Instead of a cork, this bottle had a "zork" - a delightful portmanteau of "zipper" and "cork" - that peels off and then pops out like a cork. My mind was blown.

The moobuzz zork!

I let the strawberries chill out in the wine (or "macerate," as you might call it if you were classy) while the cake finished baking. Meanwhile, I mixed together the Moscato/powdered sugar glaze in a small bowl.

After 50 minutes, the wine cake was done! I took it out of the oven and poured the glaze on top immediately, so it soaked right into the still-warm cake:

Hooray! The craft paper didn't catch on fire!

After letting it cool for about ten minutes, I sliced it up and spooned the strawberry topping over it. It was so moist and delicious! The wine soaked into the cake, which I loved, but it was too much for David. He preferred his wine cake without the extra wine on top.

Pshaw. I'll take my wine cake with wine on top and a glass of wine, please! The next evening, I took the rest of the cake over to my friend Jasmine's house and we finished it off while drinking more wine (obviously) and watching Magic Mike. Then I made up this song:

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,

Bright copper kettles and warm, woolen mittens,

Olive oil, wine cake, and a glass of more wine...

Channing Tatum. Boom.

Eat Local Challenge 2012

I've gloated about this many times, but just for the record (in case you're keeping one): I'm lucky enough to live in Santa Barbara, where it is particularly easy to eat locally grown and produced foods. It's the reason an otherwise lazy person like me can dedicate an entire blog to my adventures eating local foods and reviewing restaurants and other establishments that use local ingredients.

But sometimes it's just easier to heat up a can of soup or pick up a packaged meal at an inexpensive market. I've been in the process of moving into a new place over the past couple of weeks, so the time I can dedicate to planning local shopping trips and preparing meals using local ingredients has been more limited than usual.

Recently, I read about a project that is just the inspiration I need to get back on the proverbial track. Edible Santa Barbara, my favorite publication ever in the history of time, is sponsoring its 4th annual Eat Local Challenge in conjunction with the Community Environmental Council and the Santa Barbara Farmers Market.

Santa Barbarians (who are generally not as barbaric as they sound) are encouraged to pledge to eat only locally grown and produced food for the month of October. They can set their own limits: "local" can refer to only Santa Barbara proper, or the tri-county area, or all of the state of California. Exceptions can be made for coffee, tea, and other addictions products that are not grown locally.

Although I already make a point of eating a local diet, there are certain products I consume on a near-daily basis that originated in the far-flung corners of the world. Here are a few of those products and how I plan to address them this month:

Coffee: Ugh. No, really, "ugh" is all I can physically bring myself to say on days when I haven't had my coffee. Teaching can be awkward, as can responding to sensitive questions like, "What do you think of my new outfit?" Ugh. Since coffee isn't grown in California, and since giving it up would mean wearing a month-long scowl and alienating my friends and colleagues with glares and half-articulated grunts, I thought I'd have to make an exception. But I recently learned that Goodland Organics is experimenting with growing coffee right in Goleta, California, and selling it at the Tuesday farmers market! I can't wait to pick some up.

Milk: There is no dairy in Santa Barbara county, but Lazy Acres carries milk from dairies in the nearby area. I am also a fan of Organic Pastures raw milk, which is sold at the Saturday farmers market. Don't cry over raw milk, that's what I always say.

Bread: I love the artisan rolls from Solvang Pie Company, and as it turns out, they're made from wheat grown in the Santa Ynez valley. Perfect.

Quinoa: This part breaks my quinoa-lovin' heart. Quinoa won't grow in California, since the climate won't support it. That means I'll just have to eat a lot more legumes. I'm going to try supplementing my veggies with pasta made from locally grown wheat from Solvang Pie Company.

So there you have it: my eating local plan for the month of October. Make your own plan and share it! You can join the Facebook group and RSVP to the Facebook event for moral support. The Google group is also a great resource for ideas about where to find local versions of your favorite foods. Check out this Source Guide for a list of establishments that are on-board the local train.

If, like me, you derive your self-worth some occasional pleasure from tweeting, use #EatLocalSB, @EdibleSB and @CECSB as you track your progress.