easy | Real Food on the Table

Put aside your measuring cups and spoons, because you simply won’t need them for this quick French cake. It’s great as a last minute, friends are coming over for coffee, kind of deal. Kids will also love it as an after school snack. You can dress it up (with a little fruit coulis, like I did here) or serve it au naturel. No mater how you slice it, (pause for pun appreciation) it’s an easy and delicious dessert.

So what’s the deal with no measuring cups or spoons? Well, since it’s a yogurt cake, you use your little old yogurt container to measure out all the other ingredients. Guess I should have also mentioned that clean up is a snap with this one – you toss the yogurt container and only have one mixing bowl and spoon to wash.

In exactly this order, here’s what you plop in the bowl:

1 personal size container of plain unsweetened yogurt
1/2 of the yogurt container full of oil
2 yogurt containers full of sugar
3 yogurt containers full of flour
2 eggs
1 tsp. of baking powder (OK, so you will have to measure one thing. Here in France the baking powder comes in little individual serving packets and you just need to dump in about half a packet)
Some lemon zest – your call on the quantity. I like a good lemon flavor and so zested a little over half of a lemon.

After all the ingredients are in the bowl, you simply mix with a spoon until well blended.

If you have an interesting or cute pan, it’s fun to use it here. I searched high and low and this is the best I could come up with – a pan typically used to make a Charlotte. I was a bit worried that the batter would be too deep and thus take too long to bake, but ultimately, it worked out OK.

I baked in the oven at 350 for about 40 minutes. Like I said, my cake was quite deep and so it took a bit longer. If you go with a standard depth cake pan, you can count on closer to 30 minutes. Just keep an eye on it and watch for that just right, still moist, golden brown stage.

I flipped it out of the pan after about 10 minutes. I let it cool completely and then just dusted with powdered sugar. I blended some frozen raspberries to make a little coulis and served it to 4 hungry mouths as an after school snack. Silence in the room for at least 3 minutes as they all devoured it.

The hubs really loves fish of any kind. I wasn’t as big of a fish admirer before we were married, but I guess I’ve morphed over time. Salmon is a no brainer for me and I make a mean halibut. Occasionally tuna sneaks onto the menu. And from time to time swordfish. But I have to admit (after a couple of glasses of wine when I’m being brutally honest with myself), that there is still some intimidation factor for me when it comes to preparing fish. I can’t put my finger on it, but I think it has to do with feeling that fish requires a much more precise cooking time. And let’s face it, when fish is gross, it’s just plain gross and there’s not much that came be done to gussy it up.

That’s why I love this recipe that I came across recently. It was written forsSole and the sauce also contained fennel. I make it with rockfish, because that’s what my Costco has in stock quite regularly and it’s REALLY reasonably priced. I have made the sauce with fennel and it is lovely that way. But if you’re like me, you probably don’t just have a fennel bulb kicking around in the fridge. So I love this recipe in its modified format for 2 reasons: 1) it’s baked and my fish intimidation factor gets knocked down a notch 2) it contains stuff that I normally have on hand.

So I start by just chopping an onion and sauteeing it in some olive oil. I add a little garlic once the onion starts to turn golden. Then I add a can of diced tomatoes and their juices along with some white wine. Finally, I throw in some capers and season with some salt and pepper. I tame the capers a bit by rinsing them well before adding them. Otherwise their taste can be a bit overpowering and the little palates of the house aren’t exactly caper fans in their un-rinsed state.

If you wish to do the fennel version of the sauce, you can just sautee the fennel right along with the onion.

After the sauce is done, transfer it to the bottom of a shallow, wide baking dish. I use the old 9×13 casserole dish.

Then take your fish filets and roll them. Place them on top of the sauce. To finish things off, mix together some dry bread crumbs, softened butter and salt and pepper. Place a nice dollop of this breadcrumb mixture right in the center of each fish roll.

Now sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of white wine around the fish (not on it) and into the sauce. Bake the whole thing at 425 degrees for about 25 minutes.