I hope you enjoy this issue of Between the Layers! Share it with your friends. The Best Lemon Cake I’ve Ever Baked - No. 375Lemon + olive oil. With so much chaos around us, let’s bake something GOOD
WHEN JANICE AND BILL VARLEY MOVED to Chicago from Long Island and opened Torchio restaurant in the River North neighborhood in 2019, Janice knew they needed an amazing olive oil cake on the menu. Mostly because olive oil cake feels Italian, but for practical reasons, too. The cake is easy for a restaurant kitchen to assemble and bake, improves with flavor, and retains its moisture so the texture three days later stays as fresh and nice as the day it was baked. Janice had always loved to bake cake, starting at 10 years of age with boxed mixes. Her mother died just before her sixth birthday, so her paternal grandparents moved in to help raise her and her two siblings. It was a bittersweet situation, she recalls. Her grandfather had just retired prior to her mother’s death. “They had all these plans and were living in Queens, but they moved out to this little town on Long Island to help us. My German grandmother taught me how to bake.”
Janice and Bill, married for 40 years, had recently retired from careers in engineering (Bill) and human resources (Janice) before opening the restaurant. Bill had loved cooking at home and owning a restaurant had been a dream. Although the timing wasn’t perfect—with Covid closing Torchio from March 2020 until July 2021–it turned out to be a big success. Bill is the younger brother of Jolene Handy who writes Time Travel Kitchen here on Substack. My friendship with Jolene brought me to Chicago and to Torchio for dinner. And that’s how I tasted Janice’s lemon olive oil cake. Torchio, which means a fresh pasta “press” in Italian, is bubbling with conversation, life, and of course, pasta. Families assemble here, couples cozy up at the copper bar, and if you’re a tourist and fortunate enough to snag a table, you will be surrounded by locals—your new best friends. It’s as if the Cheers gang took a big trip to Italy and came back with an Italian nonna and her favorite recipes. The night I was there, the place was jammed. Jolene ordered fried artichokes as well as orecchiette with spicy sausage and broccoli rabe for us to split. We ended with lemon cake so soft it must have been freshly pulled from the oven.
Actually, in 2017, Janice and Bill did go to Italy to research the menu for their restaurant. They tasted a lemon olive oil cake in Ravello on the Amalfi Coast and remembered it. “I had made a lemon and orange olive oil muffin before,” Janice says, but not a cake. She baked several recipes, including one from The New York Times, but they didn’t have enough lemon flavor so “I modified it, tripled the zest and doubled the juice.” Janice says the most important thing about this recipe—really, it’s the only important thing because the cake is a snap to make—is to get the olive oil right. “The olive oil we use is mild and grassy while a lot of the oil we tasted was more peppery. That’s not a good idea for cake.”
Just after my visit, Janice was told the restaurant’s distributor could not get any more of the Zaytun brand of olive oil she was using. It was pressed from Greek olives in Palestine, and to no surprise, the conflicts there have stopped olive oil production. She called together the kitchen team for a tasting, and they selected Cento Italian evoo to use going forward in the cake. For my testing, I reached for my house olive oil, a Spanish extra virgin oil from Costco. The big plastic jug has a red label saying “Spanish extra virgin olive oil.” But after baking this cake two times, I ran out, and dashed to Costco for more oil. Without a doubt, the third and fourth cakes I baked using the fresh bottle tasted better than those made with the bottle previously opened. And so you might be wondering, this is really the best lemon cake I’ve ever baked? Better than lemon layer cake or lemon pound cake? Hands down, best lemon cake.
I’d like to thank Janice for sharing her wonderful recipe and giving me the opportunity to bake something nice while the news blares distressing reports and images. From the shooting and killing of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis to the setting fire in a historic Jewish synagogue in Birmingham, it’s been a tragic week. But we can bake cake to show that in the end, love wins. And this cake is one lovable, versatile cake. It can be baked in a Bundt, springform, or loaf pan for breakfast, afternoon tea, or dessert. I’ll bet you could make amazing muffins from the batter, too.
You can glaze it (recipe below) or not. “Bake love” may just be my mantra for 2026. And this lemony cake is a start, showing that crumb by crumb, we can bake a better place. Take care of yourselves! - xo, Anne
P.S. Speaking of olive oil, at the end of December I drove through pine-forested southeast Georgia to see how olives are being grown and pressed into luscious green-gold oil. About 12 years ago Tracy and Curtis Poling founded Woodpecker Trail Olive Farm outside Glennville on land that had been in Tracy’s family since 1854. If you drive by the modest ranch farm houses of this rural area, with fields of Vidalia onions sprouting green tops and convenience markets selling deer corn to hunters, it in no way resembles Italy’s Tuscany. But for some strange weather reason, this little pocket of Georgia called the Magnolia Midlands has a near-perfect microclimate for olive trees. And what the Polings press from those olives each fall has won top awards. It’s too peppery for today’s cake, but it’s perfect for winter salad greens and citrus.
THE RECIPE:
Torchio Lemon Olive Oil CakeJanice Varley assembles the cake batter as the NYT recipe suggested when shared by Samantha Seneviratne. But after baking one cake her way, I simplified the process the next go-around. She sprinkles 2 tablespoons sugar over the cake before it bakes, and I omitted that. I beat the batter for less time, too. Also, I reduced the milk slightly (Janice uses 1 1/4 cups). As olive oil is a natural emulsifier, which means it pulls the batter together before your eyes, you don’t need a big KitchenAid. An electric hand mixer will do, as will a whisk! And while Janice uses bleached flour, I have baked it with unbleached and bleached and noticed no difference. Do let the cake cool on the rack before wrapping for storage. If possible, Janice says, serve it the next day. Yet, I don’t have that kind of willpower and sliced it still a little warm. Excellent! You can bake this cake in pretty much any pan you like and serve it alone or with fruit, ice cream, lemon curd, whipped cream, or just a cup of tea. Makes 12 servings Bake: About 40 to 45 minutes for a springform pan, 50 minutes for a Bundt, and 1 hour for a 10-inch loaf pan
To ice the cake: Whisk 2 tablespoons milk and 1 tablespoon lemon juice (from the reserved third lemon that you zest for the cake) into 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar, sifted, until smooth. Season with a pinch of salt. The glaze needs to be thick enough to drizzle down the cake but stop. You’re on the free list for Anne Byrn: Between the Layers. If you’re liking what you’re reading, why don’t you become a paying subscriber for more recipes, stories, and content.
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