Monday, January 26, 2009

Lemon Yogurt Cake

Sunday 25 Jan 2009

As promised, after the food politics comes ... cake! And sometimes, things are just meant to be. In the last week (or so) yogurt cakes have been popping up here and there in my feed reeder: Helen at Grab Your Fork produced a pomegranate syrup cake and Maria at the Goddess's Kitchen a gâteau au yaourt. And me? Well, I had yogurt in the fridge that could do with using up.

I also had some lemons that needed using but (as ever) I was unperturbed by the lack of recipe that fitted exactly and headed into the kitchen.

The result was more than good enough to write about. This is a very simple cake to make - there's no weighing involved and there's very little fat in it (I went Maria's vegetable oil route, rather than Helen's melted butter purely because I'm lazy!). It's also ideal if you don't have electrical kitchen kit to do the usual heavy duty creaming of butter and sugar - even I would be able to make this unassisted by my Magimix!

So - preheat your oven to 180°C (160°C fan). Grease and base-line a 23 cm springform tin.

For the cake - mix 1 cup of caster sugar, 1/3 cup of vegetable oil (light olive oil would be fine - just don't go for an oil with a pronounced flavour, like extra virgin olive oil) and 2 cups of self raising flour. This will be a fine, crumbly mix. Add 1 cup of plain yogurt (full fat, no flavourings) and 2 medium eggs. When this is all combined you will have a proper cake batter. Finish the mix with the finely grated rind of one lemon (if you're cautious, just use the rind of half a lemon - but I love lemon in puddings!) and 3 heaped tablespoons of ground almonds.

Tip the batter into the cake tin and bake for 30-35 minutes, until a cocktail stick comes out cleanly and the cake is risen and golden. Allow to cool in the tin for a few minutes before tipping out onto a rack.

26012009563
Looking good even without icing!

Because of the almonds in the mix, if you wanted to finish with syrup you could (leave in the tin!). I was originally going to ice this cake but, with the full lemon rind in the batter I knew it wasn't going to need any more flavour. And let's face it, without icing you can almost pretend it's healthy (you know, yogurt, almonds, fruit ...).
Stumble Upon ToolbarStumble It!

2 Comments:

Blogger Maria♥ said...

Alex, your yogurt cake turned out great and thanks for the mention ;o)

Maria
x

3:05 pm  
Blogger Alex said...

Well, Maria - you could well be getting another mention next week if my current cake idea works out ok!

9:32 pm  

Post a Comment

<< Home