Raspberry Olive Oil Cakes

I love a baking recipe that uses olive oil rather than butter.

Often it makes it dairy free without being the annoying kind of "Dairy Free" recipe that tastes bad and includes odd dairy replacements that you have to search the health food store for, but mostly it's because, let's face it, butter is annoying! Delicious - yes.

BUT you have to remember to set it out to get to squishy room temperature in plenty of time, but not too much time in summer or it's a melty disaster that won't behave as required anymore. This is not too convenient if you're desperate to knock up a little something after a long day at work. I guess it's part of my very modern 'I want it now' attitude :)

Clearly I'm not all that avid about completely avoiding dairy the way I'm supposed to(the fact that I had french onion dip and jatz for breakfast this morning clears that up immediately!) but when you can avoid it without feeling like you're missing out on the good things in this world... well that's just brilliant! I may even have one of these little cakes for breakfast tomorrow :)

I've been making these little cakes for years. They evolved from a giant slab of a thing full of blueberries, originally from a family circle magazine? to these delicate little darlings, plump with raspberries (my favourite!). Think something like a light little friand without the almond meal, or the shape - as I don't have a friand tin.

I actually do a batch as half quantities because the original is absolutely vast! So I'll put the full quantities here but feel free to halve it like I did. A half batch gives you 12 Muffin size cakes.

4 Eggs
2 cups caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla (I used the bean paste)
1 cup extra light olive oil
1 cup apricot nectar
3 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
300g fresh or frozen raspberries

Preheat oven to 170C

Beat eggs, sugar and vanilla on high speed until pale and thick. Stir in oil and nectar, sift dry ingredients in and fold together.

Divide into muffin papers. Sprinkle raspberries over evenly and poke them under the batter so just a few peek out.

Bake for 50-55 mins until a skewer comes out clean.

These freeze beautifully and are lovely slightly warm. The dairy allowed among us could add white chocolate chips - that would be yum. I've also used self -raising flour (omitting the baking powder) and that worked wonderfully too with a lighter result.

These were again a hit with the lovely taste tester ladies at work - I think I'm starting to develop an addiction to the happy feeling I get from feeding people!

Have a lovely day everyone x