Dessert First + Alessi: Olive Oil Cake with Roasted Peaches

Olive Oil Cake and Caccia cake server on the Quattro muri e due case tray

When I was asked to pick which Alessi pieces I would like to work with, I faced an overwhelming catalog of riches to choose from. Alessi has over 90 years of history and has objects in every size, in a myriad of materials from steel to porcelain. Although I would have loved to try my hand at some of their most iconic pieces, I focused on some more unique pieces that both reflected the summer theme and also spoke to my personal sensibility.

One of the newest pieces from the Spring/Summer collection that immediately struck me and lingered in my memory was the evocative Quattro muri e due case, which means “four walls and two houses” in Italian. I was struck by the poetry of the name and in the physical object, a sensuous piece of bamboo formed into a tray that indeed looks like a four-walled courtyard with two houses at either end acting as both gateways into the interior space and as handles for the tray.

Quattro Muri e Due Case side

It’s a beautiful, thoughtful piece that immediately makes me think of the rolling hills of Tuscany with little farms nestled perfectly, picturesquely within their folds. Alessi describes this piece as “a little rustic, a little frugal, a little agricultural, and a little rural.” The artist himself, Michele de Lucchi, a well known Italian architect and designer, has stated that, “Landscape has become a very poetic condition and something we’re increasingly worried about damaging. In Italy we destroyed a lot of our wonderful landscapes. So one message of the tray is to present a human being living in the world without fighting against the natural landscape.”

While knowing the backstory to this tray has certainly enhanced my appreciation of it, I already knew it spoke to me from first glance. It just makes me happy when I look at it, and I want to use it to display everything I make. It’s like a little piece of la dolce vita in my home.

For this lovely piece, I chose a recipe that I felt could best reflect its message of a simple, unaffected connection with the land. This olive oil cake is scented with citrus, and paired with peaches roasted with honey, almonds and Vin santo- all part of Tuscany’s bounty. I imagine this is the sort of unassuming cake you might find served at one of these farmhouses.

Olive Oil Cake on Quattro Muri e Due Case

You can use any olive oil you like – using extra virgin or a more robustly flavored olive oil will give the cake a more pronounced olive oil flavor, but whatever you use you will get a wonderfully moist cake with a dense, tender crumb. It is delectable on its own or dressed up with the peaches. The sugar and honey help bring out the sweetness of the peaches, and I always love the combination of almonds with peaches. Vin santo is the classic dessert wine of Tuscany – if you can’t find any, a white wine will do. I used a mix of white and yellow peaches for the color contrast, although you can also use any ripe fruit, like cherries or apricots. It’s a cake made for golden afternoons.

Some of the other pieces in these photos are the Caccia cake server, the very clever Taste-huile olive oil taster (shaped like an olive), and plates from the Tonale collection. Working with such beautiful pieces has certainly been inspiring! 

Olive Oil Cake slice and taster