Stop me if you’ve heard something like this before: a nondescript cardboard box, roughly the weight of a medium-sized mammal, containing more blood oranges than would be needed to feed a parched grade-school soccer team at half time, arrives on one’s desk at work.

Okay—if you’re an acquaintance of mine, then yes, this would probably ring a bell because just such a package arrived for me on a frigid weekday morning this past winter. If you work in my office, you might recall a day you saw blood oranges rolling around atop a number of desks—those of the semi-reluctant colleagues I was able to pawn a few off on. Or perhaps you glanced into an office in passing just in time to see an orange soar through the air as the office’s occupant momentarily succeeded in a spontaneous act of juggling. (Okay, the juggler was I and if the passerby was you, let’s just agree to forget that, shall we?)

Or perhaps if you’re an acquaintance of mine, you would remember last year, right around early spring, when another such box arrived for me, though maybe five pounds heavier, and bearing a similar weight in kumquats.

Honestly, I’m sorry, but I’ve just never been able to get that into citrus. It’s healthy, I know, but there has always been something about it that just feels so insubstantial to me, so un-food-like. When this latest package arrived, I dialed my aunt’s number in San Diego.

“Did you send me a gopher’s weight in blood oranges?”

“What?” she said.

“A huge box of fruit I’ve never liked is sitting on my desk right now,” I said.

“Oh, that,” she said.

“Yes, that.” (By way of explanation: My aunt is a transplanted New Yorker who relocated out West several years ago when my uncle retired. She is the somewhat stupefied owner of a lovely home in southern California with a big yard dotted with various kinds of citrus trees, all bearing fruit that might cost upwards of four dollars a pound at Gristedes.)

“Well, if you don’t like them, give them away to people in your office,” she said.

“I did. But what about the other forty?” I said.

“You’re creative, you’ll figure something out,” she said.

Maybe she was right. Okay, so I may not love blood oranges but I do love a good culinary challenge. I went off in search of an interesting recipe. I thought I would try to keep things healthy and do some sort of fruit salad, but when I mentioned this to my colleagues, the idea was met with widespread protest. “But can’t you make some sort of cake out of them?” the colleagues begged. “Something with butter?” (Okay, fine. I’m the one who wanted the cake. What? I was raised by a dad who would stop at the hardware store like clockwork every Sunday, not to buy tools but because he knew Sunday was the day they gave out free donuts.)

Well, a hearty thank you must go out to my favorite food blogger, Deb at SmittenKitchen.com, for steering me (unknowingly, but if she’s Googling herself and comes across this article, “Hi Deb!”) in the direction of a fabulous solution: Melissa Clarke’s Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake. This recipe succeeds in transforming something relatively unexciting (except for the name of its carnage-invoking color) into something delicious and complex, while still retaining a healthful element in its use of olive oil in place of butter. The result is a cake that is so unique in flavor and so unarguably food-like, you won’t even mind having had to sacrifice your juggling balls to make it.

Blood Orange Olive Oil Cake

Adapted (barely) from SmittenKitchen.com (in turn, adapted from Melissa Clark’s A Good Appetite: Secrets of the Cake Stand)

Ingredients:

Butter for greasing pan
3 medium or 4 small blood oranges (Now, I realize it’s taken me awhile to get this recipe in print, so regular oranges should be an adequate substitute should seasonal availability prevent you from getting the blood ones.)
1 cup sugar
Scant 1/2 cup plain yogurt (I used low-fat Greek)
3 large eggs
2/3 cup good extra virgin olive oil (I used Key Food’s brand, and the results were pretty outstanding, so hey, go with the “bottom shelf” guy when you can)
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
Whipped cream, for serving (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan. Grate zest from 2 oranges (or 3, if oranges are small) and place in a bowl with the sugar. Using your fingers, rub ingredients together until orange zest is evenly distributed in sugar.

Supreme an orange by cutting off the bottom and top so fruit is exposed and orange can stand upright on a cutting board. Cut away peel and pith (the white stuff), following curve of fruit with your knife. Cut orange segments out of their connective membranes as best you can and let them fall into a bowl. Repeat with another orange (and a third, if oranges are small). Break up segments with your fingers to about 1/4-inch pieces.

Halve remaining orange and squeeze juice into a measuring cup; you will have about 1/4 cup. Add yogurt to juice until you have 2/3 cup liquid altogether. Pour mixture into bowl with sugar and whisk well. Whisk in eggs and olive oil.

In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Gently stir dry ingredients into wet ones. Fold in pieces of orange segments. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake cake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until it is golden and a knife inserted into center comes out clean. Cool on a rack for 5 minutes, then unmold and cool to room temperature right-side up. Serve with whipped cream.