Oh, yum.
I knew I'd like this before I grated a smidge of lemon zest. The recipe just read as yummy. And since I knew I'd like it, I tripled the recipe. I was going to quadruple it, but figured I should save some eggs for the rest of the family.
Liliana of My Cookbook Addiction selected the French Yogurt Cake for this week and it sounded so good I made it well in advance of the posting date (something I haven't done in some time.) So thank you, Liliana, for picking this fabulous recipe! And of course, thank you, Dorie, for sharing it with us!
First up, the measuring of the ingredients. Flour, baking powder, salt, and ground almonds. Please keep in mind this is a triple batch, so if that looks like a lot of salt in the third picture below, well, that's why.
These dry ingredients are whisked together...
And then, to continue...sugar and lemon zest. I was nearly out of white sugar, so I used turbinado sugar for the rest.
Oh, AND, I used Meyer lemons. I'd seen them when I walked into my local Dave's Marketplace, and I just started grabbing them like a crazy person. I forced myself to stop at eight.
Since they're smaller than the lemons I usually get, I zested four instead of three (for the tripled recipe). That worked out nicely.
I added the zest to the sugar and rubbed them together. My kitchen smelled like spring.
Onto the wet ingredients...the yogurt, vanilla, eggs, and oil.
And into the mixer we go. First the sugar and eggs and yogurt and vanilla.
Oh, it smells heavenly!
And then the flour mixture.
And finally the oil.
Once I'd folded the oil in it was time to divide the batter into all my pans. That's right, ALL my pans. Part of the reason I tripled the recipe was so I could give some of the cake away. I figured mini loaves of different sizes would be cute and would allow me to share the wealth with more people. So I buttered four mini loaf pans, three smallish loaf pans, and one little square pan. I ended up not using the square one. The other seven worked perfectly for my purposes.
And then it was into the oven for all of them. I checked them at 30 minutes, and continued baking for another fifteen, which was just right. And oh, did the house smell good while that was going on!
Mmmmmm, lemony.
After ten minutes, I removed the loaves from the pans and set them out to finish cooling.
And I made the glaze - lemon marmalade and a bit of water. Dorie's recipe says to strain the marmalade and then warm it up in a pan with the water. I admit it. I'm a rebel. I heated the marmalade with the water first and then strained it. It seemed like the easier route, since the marmalade was thinner and dripped through the strainer more easily.
So pretty. Like jewels....
And that was it. I wrapped them up and handed some out to a few of my neighbors, and eventually found homes for most of the rest of them.
Not ALL of them, of course.
There would have been a mutiny or an insurrection or an uprising or something here, because, hard as it is to believe, EVERYONE in the household really liked this cake. Yay!
And who could blame them?
If you'd like to make one or three or seventy batches for yourself, you can find the recipe on Liliana's site or in Dorie Greenspan's book Baking: From My Home to Yours on pages 224-225.
And you can also check out the other TWD members' blogs and see what they thought of this lovely cake.
