Olive Oil Cake: Eh.

For her 30th (!) birthday, Cole requested an olive oil cake.  I've been wanting to try my hand at one of these for quite awhile.  It's a far cry from the incredibly rich, decadent Chocolate Peanut Butter cake that I made for Cole's birthday last year (which was the subject of my very first blog post, incidentally).

After hitting Sam up for a good recipe and finding that she didn't have one, I trolled the Internet until finally settling on this recipe.

Here's how it turned out.

Looks good, right?  Nothing fancy, but certainly edible.  Well...I wasn't impressed at all.  The cake came out a lot drier and more crumbly than I expected.  The flavors were good:  subtle olive oil, interspersed with citrus and almond.  But I wasn't compelled to devour my slice, even with the citrus compote I made to go along with it.

A week later, 1/3 of the cake is still chillin' on its cake stand.  That right there should tell you something.

You win some, you lose some, right?

{Note the sweet cake stand in these photos--the crown jewel of my burgeoning vintage cake stand collection and a gift from my dad!}