Citrus Olive Oil Cake with Chia Seeds - Simple Roots (2024)

This post is sponsored by our friends at Roxbury Mountain Maple! We absolutely love their naturally sweetened, great selection of all things maple and we know that you will too!

I feel like sun hasn’t shown it’s amazing face in like a hundred days here in Iowa. But this weekend, she did, and it was as glorious as you can imagine. Combine the bright beautiful sun with near 50 plus temperatures and you can only imagine the number of people I saw walking around, smiling, wearing shorts.While strange, it is true that after four months, 50 degrees feels like a heat wave. And I’ll take it.

So in celebration of the sun shining and a day that actually gave us hope that spring is on the horizon we celebrated with thisorange citrus olive oil cake with chia seedsand a special GIVEAWAY just for you.

No matter how your day is going, I can promise that it’s going to be a good day if you pull this out of the oven. Moist, flavorful, and slightly sweetened with a touch of maple syrup. I’d like to mention that we have been calling this breakfast cake. Why? So we can eat it for breakfast duh! It was the perfect weekend treat and definitely one that was needed after a loooooong week. Which I haven’t mentioned, but it was a doozy.

• Someone found a sharpie and now sharpie is everwhere.
• The two-year old rolled outan entire roll of toilet paper in the toilet and flushed it creating a flood in the bathroom.
• There was a mouse in the garage, and I hate mice.
• The one year olds are getting mouths full of teeth which means grouchy, clinging, horribly fussy babies. Have I mentioned I watch two one-year olds most days?
• They cut my bag of 250 smoothie straws into a million and one pieces claiming they created confetti.

Crying…. sobbing… more crying… it can’t be Monday already?!?

Okay, I’m entirely joking – well kind of. I mean there are some days that I feel they are really going to tie me up and put me on the curb, but most days we do just fine with only one or two setbacks. But it’s Monday so I must embrace all that this week has to offer. I can only say that as I’mno longer on theverge of a mommy meltdown thanks to thesun shining and the entire fam getting outside for some fresh air.

The other positive news, there is still a piece of this heavenly citrus olive oil cake left, sitting on the counter waiting for that perfect, quiet, glorious moment when I get to sit down and eat it, soaking up the last rays of sunshine.

So you’re probably wondering about the cake already. This pretty little thing here took a LOT of trial and error. In fact, I made it six times in multiple different forms until it finally turned into the citrus olive oilcake, which by the way I am extremely happy with. But six times! It started out the first three as lemon olive oil bread but I could never prevent it from falling. Every.single.time it fell and all of the changes I was making didn’t seem to matter. Fortunately it tasted good so no one was complaining that it kept failing.

I believe the hubs just said, “Whelp, it fell again. I guess that means we get to eat another loaf.” All while smirking.

I, on the other hand am calling in my mom and grandma and seeking instagramers to try to figure out why. Why on earth my bread was falling. Apparently it just wasn’t in the cards to be bread sothe only rational move was toturn it into a cake. Because when everything else crashes around you, you make cake. So here it is my friends a beautiful citrus olive oilcake with chia seeds that is made in full representation of the sun. I mean I don’t think it was on error why citrus foods are in season during the winter months. If cut perfectly they really look like a beautiful vibrant rendition of the magnificent sun.

Enough with the sun already? Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking,just go back into hibernation Alexa.

I promise never to speak about the sun in the post again. Please keep me around…

But in all seriousness and health wise this cake is not like many others. We don’t even have to go out on a limb to say that this is healthy-ish. Made with almond flour, chia seeds, unsweetened applesauce, lemon juice, maple syrup, flaxseed, eggs and of course slices of fresh orange and lemon it really does have a lot of nutritional qualities inside. Plus, it’s just a twisted version of the very favorite banana cake with chia seeds that everyone has loved, so you know it is going to be good.

What’s even better is my new favorite maple syrup company Roxbury Mountain Mapleis involved.This family owned farm is committed to producing the highest quality, purest maple syrup available and I promise I can stand behind that. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced real, pure maple syrup but the quality and flavor is bar none. I’ll be the first to admit, that I generally just pick up a bottle of pure maple syrup at Costco but and this is a big but, it doesn’t even compare. There is a huge difference quality wise, but that probably comes at no surprise to most of you. The flavor, consistency, and color is so much richer coming from this family farm.

Definitely worth every penny. It’s like all good things in life, once you start you just can’t stop so now I’m a forever, loyal Roxbury Maple fan.

I promise no one around here is complaining.

Speaking of sugars, I get asked all of the time what my favorite sugars to use are and my thoughts on cooking with things like stevia. Well I have to be honest, I’ve done my fair share of trial and error when it comes to zero-calorie “healthy” sweeteners. Honestly, my family just doesn’t react well to them, nor did I ever figure out how to cook with them or end up liking the result. You can read more specifically on why my family gave up stevia here.

But in the end, I have just gone back to real, natural, found in nature, sweeteners. That is why 75% of the time I use, bake with and cook with 100% pure maple syrup and local honey. The other 25% is a combination of either sorghum, black-strap molasses or coconut sugar. I think there is value to this in immense ways, especially knowing that while still a sugar and something that we can’t go overboard on, there is true nutritional value to maple syrup and honey which can even be touted as medicinal.

What’s even better is you don’t have to sacrifice texture or flavor of foods when you use the real deal nor worry about the unfortunate side effects some (and I exaggerate some) people go through when dealing with the “artificial” or zero-calorie natural sweeteners.

If you want to learn more about my sweeteners of choice make sure you download my healthy sweetener guide below and sample them out in this citrus olive oil cake. So delicious you’ll understand why I don’t negotiate.

Now that we’ve cleared the elephant out of the room, or at least pushed it to the corner (Oh I know some of you are still having concerns with my views on sugars. We can get into this more in a later post.) I wanted to end with a very special celebration to all things spring. So in honor of warmer weather and brighter skiesthe lovely family at Roxbury Mountain Maple is doing a very special giveaway just for you. If you win you’re going to experience the best maple syrup and maple cream you’ve ever experienced in your life and if you don’t, don’t panic you can find everything you’d want to purchase listed out below. And don’t forget to read about the Maple Cream I referenced in this post.It could be a deciding factor for you.

GIVEAWAY ALERT!!

And just because I think you all need to experience maple cream in your life, you will forever be changed, Roxbury farms is hosting a giveaway for:

• one pound maple cream
• one pint maple syrup
• 12 ounce maple sugar

All you need to do is visit the link below, enter your email address and confirm your entry, we’ll pick a winner next week to get these amazing maple products! The coolest part? We’ll be sending you your very own “Lucky URL” that you can share with your friends. For each friend that signs up, you’ll get three extra entries into the drawing. The more you share, the better your chances to win, pretty sweet, right!?!

There’s only one thing left to say…

When life hands you lemons, buy some maple syrup. So much better than lemonade.