Lemon Yogurt Cake

It's mid-March already. How did that happen? 

I've had a serious case of the lazies. This post has been sitting incomplete in my drafts folder for over a month. Aside from updating my blog I should be working on my thesis but instead I've been giving myself 'a break' spending my mornings in a pensive trance as I moved around my kitchen measuring, whisking, stirring, dreaming. 

I'd taken to sitting out for hours on my sunny patio observing my daughter and her friends do this:

and this 

and more of this 

When I began writing this post weeks and weeks ago the sunny lemon cheeriness of this cake was meant to be a reflection of the cool but sunny days we had been enjoying here. But we've been experiencing a lot of sand storms this past week. An unfortunate but recurring theme for this time of the year forcing us to remain stuck indoors. 

This gives me time to catch up on some projects, and reading. So there are books and my google reader, and copious amounts of Rooibos Tea. Which brings me to this lemon cake. I have been searching for the perfect lemon pound cake recipe for ages. And while that doesn't sound like a huge challenge, it was. Cakes I have tried in the past have been usually too dense with just a bare hint of lemoness. What I really wanted out of a lemon cake was an intense, zingy lemon flavor. I wanted it to be moist and light, zesty without being either too tart or cloyingly sweet. 

So let me just say I love this version by Ina Garten - demonstrated by the fact that I've made it three times in the previous month. Twice as a loaf cake, once as cupcakes. The second and third time I made it, I threw in extra lemon zest into the batter and once it was baked I lightly pricked the top of the loaf/cupcakes with a fork while it was still warm so that the lemon syrup would soak a little better instead of pooling at the bottom of the cake. The recipe calls for extra-large eggs, which I didn't have, so I just threw in an extra egg because mine were on the smaller side. 

This cake is all about the lemons - moist and tangy with just the right amount of sweetness. It actually tastes better the day after it is baked. If it lasts that long. 

Lemon Yogurt Cake

barely adapted from Barefoot Contessa at Home, Pages 168-9 (recipe can also be found here)

Yield: I loaf or 12 cupcakes

1.5 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp sea salt

grated zest of 3-4 lemons

1 cup whole-milk yogurt

1 1/3 cups sugar, divided

4 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

For the glaze: 

1 cup confectioners sugar

2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease an 8.5" x 2.5" loaf pan or line muffin tin with 12 cupcake liners. If  using loaf pan, line bottom with parchment paper. Grease and flour the pan. 

Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the yogurt, 1 cup of sugar, eggs, lemon zest and vanilla. Slowly whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. With a rubber spatula, fold in the oil. 

Pour the batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for 50 minutes. Or 30 mins if making cupcakes. 

Meanwhile cook the 1/3 cup lemon juice and remaining sugar over low heat in a small pan until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is clear. Set aside. 

When the cake is done, let it cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Remove and place on a cooling rack placed over a sheet pan. While the cake is still warm, pour the lemon-sugar syrup over the cake and allow it to soak in. Cool completely. 

Combine the confectioners sugar and lemon juice and pour glaze over cooled cake. 

How to Make a Cupcake Bouquet

 

Ever wondered how to make one of these? 

It's extremely simple and I'll show you how. 

What you need: 

- a planter

- a styrofoam ball or blocks of styrofoam

- wooden skewers

- green crepe paper

- a couple of baked and decorated cupcakes

Here's what you do: 

- fit the styrofoam ball or blocks of styrofoam into the planter. Make sure it's a snug fit. Cover completely with green crepe paper. 

- depending on how big you want the bouquet to be, poke wooden skewers through the styrofoam to cover the surface. For this bouquet I used 11.

- In order to assess how many cupcakes and skewers I would need, I did a mock-arrangement with my cupcake liners before poking the skewers in.

- Don't use very moist cupcakes for this - the ones with yellow sprinkles that I used were quite moist and it was very hard to keep them from falling apart. The skewers would just break them in two.

 

- Now all you need to do is fit your cupcakes over the skewers. You can frost/decorate them either before or after you're done assembling the bouquet. 

That is it - it is that simple!

I made that bouquet a long time back, it was the first time that I had ever made a cupcake bouquet & I still have the planter because I picked all the cupcakes off it & didn't allow anyone to eat them. 

Why? 

Because I had frosted the cupcakes petal pink (to match the pink ribbon) and I used shortening instead of butter because it was a warm day; the bouquet was mostly for display and so I didn't want to risk the butter-based frosting slipping off. 

Before I even got to the bake-sale, just minutes after I had frosted the cupcakes,they turned from pink to this alarming shade of fuchsia! Strange, huh? I don't know what happened; maybe the shortening was no good or there was something wrong with the food color. I couldn't tell. And I couldn't risk letting anyone eat a cupcake and getting sick. 

However, it was so much fun to make this bouquet. It's a perfect gift - I can't think of anyone who wouldn't love to receive one of these for a birthday or anniversary.

Monkey Cupcakes

These were requested by my son today. 

He would never actually eat them, but thinks they're cute enough to take along to a friends' place. I've made these a couple of times before; for parties at his school and a bake sale. Kids always find these super moist cupcakes irresistible. 

Me? I love the cinnamon cream cheese frosting. It's completely delicious.

I got both the recipe and the idea for decorating these cupcakes out of the 'Cupcakes from the Cake Doctor' book. This book has so many ideas for cupcakes but I've only managed to try very few. All of that will change, of course, and I might stop browsing through the book and actually try out more fantastic ideas at some point this year. 

Ok, back to the recipe.

500 Cupcake Challenge

I recently purchased this book and going through Clara's blog one day at http://iheartcuppycakes.wordpress.com, I discovered she had started and then abandoned the 500 cupcake challenge. (http://iheartcuppycakes.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/500-cupcake-challenge/). So .. I decided to convince her to start once again. And so she and I will be starting at the beginning of the month and anyone else is welcome to jump on the bandwagon.

Here are some rules that I've thought of:

• Participants would have to own the book 500 cupcakes by Fergel Connolly.
• We could post any time during the first half of the month. Posting times will be flexible initially - we could change the rule if/as the challenge grows.
• Participants would have to have a blog to post baking experiences on.
• We could start with Recipe #1 on page 19 - which makes it easier to keep track.
  
• We could substitute ingredients/improvise if suddenly out of an ingredient.
  

That's really it, I can't think of anything else.

However, I have to note here that I've tried a few recipes from the book and so far the 2-3 I tried were exactly the same except for frosting. So it may not be worth it to make each and every one? We'll have to see as we go along, I guess.