Ciambella Cake

Ciambella cake is a light and moist Italian ring-shaped that can be eaten any time of day and made with simple ingredients. It goes so well with your morning coffee and it can be made ahead of time so it is ready when you wake up. This ciambella cake is made with honey, yogurt, and a little olive oil for a rich and moist cake that is perfect for breakfast or dessert. Serve this with some fresh seasonal berries, a drizzle of honey or powdered sugar for a beautiful presentation.

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Ciambella cake is as classic to Italian baking and cooking as Italian meat sauce or tiramisu. This Ciambella honey yogurt cake has yogurt and honey in the cake making it moist and lightly sweetened.

The shape is a ring or donut shape (Ciambella in Italian) and is often how Italians bake these cakes that are served for breakfast in Italy.

You can use a regular cake pan for this as well. I love making these cakes because they are really simple and rustic and they make a lightly sweet breakfast that my kids can grab and go on their way to school.

I later can enjoy a slice with some honey and my coffee.

Ciambella Cake Pan

For this ciambella cake, I use a French-style cake pan called a Savarin mold which is a tube cake pan with the inner circle being very large. The center openeing is wider than a traditional ring cake pan.

I prefer this because it is more authentic to the traditional Ciambella shape (think donut shape) plus it looks more rustic and cooks faster because there is more heat that enters the center of the pan when cooking. A bonus is with the Savarin cake pan, you can use it for all sorts of recipes, not just baking recipes.

For this recipe, you can use any ring pan you have on hand.

About this Italian Ciambella Cake

Ciambella cakes can have any flavor that you want. The name Ciambella refers to the shape of the cake and the tradition of this style of cake being served as a casual breakfast food.

Yes, Italians do eat cake for breakfast!

The flavors in this ciambella cake are honey, olive oil, vanilla, and yogurt and it is not overly sweet nor is it too strong. It does have a light flavor of olive oil since it is made with extra virgin olive oil.

If you do not like the flavor of olive oil, you can substitute any vegetable oil for it instead. If you are like me and love the flavor of olive oil just follow the recipe as is.

This ciambella cake recipe produces a light, moist crumb that is not heavy and perfect with a glass of milk or your morning coffee. It stays well on the counter for a couple of days and in the refrigerator a couple of days more after that.

Give it a try and you will see just how easy these Italian cakes can be to make!

If you are looking for more Italian cake inspiration then you would love my ricotta lemon cake. This is also a traditional Italian cake baked as a ciambella cake and it is amazing.

Ingredients

• All Purpose Flour
• Greek yogurt you can also use regular yogurt. I like using vanilla yogurt to increase the vanilla flavor in this recipe. I also almost always have some in my fridge 🙂
• Eggs
• Honey
• Extra virgin olive oil or vegetable oil
• Vanilla extract
• Baking powder
• Kosher salt

These are all very basic baking ingredients. This cake is very simple, just the way Italians like to bake!

How to make

Here are the steps to make this Italian cake with honey, yogurt and olive oil. Full directions below.

• Pre-heat oven
• Grease a cake pan with butter
• Whisk wet ingredients in a large bowl.
• Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl mix your flour, baking powder, and salt together
• Combine. Combine wet and dry ingredients until it becomes a somewhat of a smooth batter
• Pour. Pour your batter into your prepared cake pan
• Bake for 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees or until a cake tester comes out clean
• Cool.
• Flip. After it is cooled, flip it out of the cake pan and let it cool on a cooling rack for another 20 minutes

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