Sunday

Lemon yoghurt cake



I had some left-over Greek yoghurt, so I googled a recipe for a yoghurt cake.
The texture of the cake was soft and velvety and my co-workers, who happily assume the role of guinea pigs for all my baking endeavors, gave it a big thumbs up.

Apparently, it's a recipe from "Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book", but I found it on a Dutch recipe site.

What you need (1 loaf):
300g sugar
50g softened butter
3 eggs
225g Greek yoghurt.
zest of 1 lemon
175g self-raising flour, sifted
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp vanilla extract

For the lemon glaze:
100g powdered sugar (icing sugar), sifted.
approx. 1 1/2 tbsp of lemon juice

Preperations:
Preheat the oven at 170ºC. Grease the baking tin or line it with baking parchment.
Wash the lemon to remove any wax, zest the lemon in a small bowl and set aside. Squeeze the lemon juice in another small bowl and set aside.
Take a large bowl and wipe the inside with a bit of lemon juice to make it completely grease-free.
Separate the eggs: put the egg whites in the grease-free bowl and the egg yolks in another large bowl.
Beat the egg whites until it forms soft peaks.

Add sugar, vanilla, salt and butter to the egg yolks and beat until it's a soft, fluffy mixture.
Stir in the yoghurt and lemon zest. With a wooden spoon, stir in the sifted flour and baking powder (be careful not to remove all air from the mixture). Carefully fold in the beaten egg whites.
Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for 1 - 1 1/4 hrs until an inserted knife comes out clean.
Let the cake cool for a few minutes, take it out of the tin and leave it to cool completely on a wire rack.
Once the cake has cooled, make the glaze by stirring the lemon juice through the icing sugar. Pour the glaze over the cake and spread evenly over the surface. The glaze will harden in the fridge.

The cake should be stored in the fridge and can be kept for up to a week (but I doubt it will make it that long...)

Observations/alterations:
- I used caster sugar
- I used margarine i/o butter
- I used 1 sachet (8g) vanilla sugar i/o vanilla extract
- I have a fan oven so I lowered the baking temperature to 160ºC (next time, I may even lower it a bit more to 155ºC so the cake will rise more evenly).
- I didn't have a sieve at hand, so I didn't sift the flour - maybe that's why one side of the cake slightly collapsed??
- you could use grated orange peel and orange juice or grated lime peel and lime juice for a different flavour.

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