Let them eat olive cake

Some things sound odd. Bacon ice cream. Caviar foam. Olive cake. But wait, olive cake is actually very, very good. This recipe comes from an amazing woman I met a couple of months ago after discovering her sweet cured olives. Helen knows everything there is to know about olives (and then some) - and this is absolutely delicious.

Helen's Olive Cake
This is like an antipasto all-in-one - a light, fluffy scone-ish dough loaded with good Mediterranean flavours. I've added feta and herbs because I happened to have lots of both at the time. Make this for a weekend picnic or to serve a group of very hungry people with drinks.

1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
leaves from a few sprigs of thyme or rosemary
3 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup plain yoghurt
1 roasted red pepper (from a jar), chopped
2 cups black olives, pitted and chopped
6 sundried tomatoes, chopped
2 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180C and grease and line a 24cm cake tin. Cook the onion, garlic and herbs in a little olive oil until soft, then set aside to cool slightly.
Beat the eggs, oil and yoghurt together in a large bowl. Stir in the cooked onion and garlic, roasted red pepper, olives, feta and sundried tomatoes. Sift the flour and baking powder over the top and gently combine. Spoon into the prepared tin and bake for 40-50 minutes. Cool to room temperature before cutting into wedges with a serrated knife. Best eaten on the day you make it, but leftovers can be frozen and successfully taken to work for lunch.