Yogurt | 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.

It’s actually chilly! I repeat . . . it’s actually chilly. This statement might not mean much to many, but to this SoCal girl transplanted from Ohio, this is cause for much rejoicing. A fall day that feels like fall.

I won’t go on about the weather any longer because we are technically in the “recipe, and only the recipe” series. Let me just add that if it actually rains, as per the weather forecast, I may become giddy.

This new salmon recipe recently made me giddy because it was just SO easy. To start with, I tossed together the citrus yogurt sauce. A little Greek yogurt, some olive oil, some grated lime zest, fresh squeezed lime juice, some orange zest, a little fresh squeezed orange juice, a bit of salt, and some honey – that’s all this great sauce requires.

I just whisked that all together, along with a little water, and put it aside while I broiled my salmon.

For the salmon, I just rinsed it and patted it dry, placed it on a foil lined broiling pan, and sprinkled with salt and pepper.

I broiled the fish for about 7 minutes, then covered with some foil, and broiled another 7 minutes until it was cooked through. I served with the citrus sauce, some roasted broccolini, brown rice, and roasted tomato slices, and called it a day .