Monday, February 15, 2016
Sunday, February 14, 2016
Today's Recipe Challenge: French Yogurt Cake
I came across a recipe for French Yogurt Cake, described as a cake in every French housewife's repertoire. It sounded pretty easy. No creaming of butter and sugar, no separating eggs... Sounds too good to be true. I did a little more digging and sure enough I found a number of variations on this simple theme. Most, if not all required 1 1/2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, plain greek-style yogurt (any fat content), 1 cup sugar, 2-3 eggs, some sort of fat and a flavoring such as lemon zest, orange oil, vanilla, etc. Very easy. I decided to make this cake for our office meeting this week. I didn't have any greek yogurt so I substituted sour cream for the yogurt. I also didn't have any lemons, but I did have some frozen cherries so I decided to use some of them. Here's my recipe:
French Yogurt (or Sour Cream) Cake
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup plain greek-style yogurt or sour cream
3 eggs (room temperature)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup frozen pitted cherries, defrosted and chopped
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons soft unsalted butter for greasing a pan
- Grease an 8x4 inch loaf pan and set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl, set aside
- In another bowl, whisk together the sugar and yogurt or sour cream and then add eggs, one at a time, whisking vigorously between each added egg. Add vanilla and almond extracts
- Add chopped cherries to flour mixture and toss with the flour mixture (this helps the cherry pieces "float" in the batter rather than sinking)
- Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients (not the oil yet) and whisk until the ingredients are fully incorporated
- Using a rubber spatula, add the oil in 3 or 4 "glugs", beating with the spatula to incorporate fully before adding more
- Pour into your prepared pan and bake for 55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean
- Cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then tip the cake out and cool completely
Here are some photos of the process:
First things first... get those cherries out of the freezer to defrost. I put them on paper towels and cut them in half to facilitate the defrosting |
Once defrosted, I used a sharp knife to chop the cherries and put them, again, on paper towels to dry a little. You don't want a lot of extra juice making the cake heavy |
Whisk your flour baking powder and salt together. Add the sour cream or yogurt and whisk together |
Whisk each egg vigorously into the sour cream/sugar mixture. |
Toss the chopped cherries into the flour mixture and stir to coat the chopped cherries |
Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients until well combined. Using a rubber spatula add the oil in several additions mixing it in thoroughly before adding more. |
Pour into prepared pan and bake for 55 minutes or until your cake tester comes our clean |
Cool in pan for 10 minutes and then tip out of the pan and let sit until completely cool. |
Here it is. A really nice, favorful cake that was really easy and infinitely variable. Try lemon, orange, rosewater, anise.. any flavoring your like |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)