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. 

Baking With Dorie: Lemon Cup Custard

If you've read my previous blog posts about BWD challenges, you'll know that I try to play around with these recipes - taking my cues from the alternative suggestions in the book. So, even though I chose the recipe for this weeks' challenge, I already knew I'd end up making anything but the Lemon Cup custard. 

And how glad I am that I tried other variations. In fact, I tried two: the espresso-cinnamon cup custard and the orange-star anise version. I'll eat anything with cinnamon in it (I even eat fruit with a generous sprinkle of cinnamon), so I knew I was going to love the espresso custard. And I did. 

The most enjoyable part of this challenge was baking these custards. I used espresso cups to bake my espresso-cinnamon custard and halved the recipe because I wanted to try more versions. The custard came out slightly jiggly after 20 minutes and I felt I might have under-baked it just a little.

I had plenty of custard left over but own only 3 espresso cups (don't ask me why). Since I was obsessed with the idea of making it in small cups, I baked the remaining amount in my daughters' tea cups (from Ikea). I loved how cute they looked:

This time I baked for 20 minutes again and it seemed just right. I cooled the custards overnight and dusted with cocoa powder right before taking these photos. I know it looks like specks of chocolate here but it's actually cocoa powder that just turned strangely solid, speck-like as soon as it came in contact with the very cold custard. 

Regardless of how strange it looked, the espresso custard was lovely - the texture was that of a classic baked custard but there was no eggy taste because of the strong flavors from the espresso and cinnamon (I think I may have used a lot of cinnamon - but I did say I love cinnamon, didn't I?)

Since I'd made the Espresso Custard a week back, I still had plenty of time to do another version but it was hard to decide which one. I almost discarded the idea, but then Tina sparked my curiosity by talking about the 'egginess' of the custard and how bakers from TWD had been generally unhappy with this custard because of the eggy factor and the lack of strong lemon flavor. 

I knew then that I had to do another version and find out for myself. I'd been partial towards the idea of Orange and Star Anise quite simply because I've never had a dessert flavored with star anise. Where I come from, star anise is used primarily in meat dishes, and then also, sparingly. The closest I've come to having it in something non-savory is green tea. So I was skeptical but too curious not to try it out. 

Again, I halved the recipe and used the zest of 2 oranges instead of 1. I had a star anise with just 3 points so I threw the whole bud into the milk instead of removing 3 points from it. After the milk came to a boil, I removed it from the heat and then let everything infuse for about 45 minutes (or a little more) instead of 30.

This time, I baked the custard in a bowl instead of ramekins so I wasn't sure about the baking time and may have over-baked it just a little because the center jiggled only slightly. The custard smelled slightly eggy & I couldn't be sure the orange flavor had really come through because once again, I refrigerated the custard overnight before finally tasting it the next morning. 

Let's just say it was simply wonderful! It took a few minutes for my taste-buds to adjust to the idea of star anise in a dessert, and then there was no looking back! It was slightly over-baked, but still very flan-like in texture with a wonderful burst of citrus flavor and the surprising warm undertone from the star anise. This recipe was, for me, a winner in every way and I may never go back to making custard with short-cut instant mixes when it is so simple to make it from scratch, and that too, with so many variations.

Do check out the BWD blogroll here and here to see the other versions of this dessert by my fellow BWD bakers. If you'd like to join us for our next BWD challenge on June 21 (Summer Fruit Galette, chosen by Elizabeth of Gluten-Free Baking 101), drop me an email - we'd love to have you bake along with us.

You can get the recipe right here, after the jump:

Baking With Dorie: The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart

I have been more than ready for BWD Monday: this has been the longest, most exhausting and emotionally draining week for me. And so this recipe for Lemon Cream Tart, chosen this week by Elizabeth of Gluten Free Baking, was just what I needed to help me unwind. 

I turned it into a weekend project, and let me tell you: making this tart was a real labor of love. I started by making the lemon cream a day in advance. Now I love all things lemon - and any desserts with 'lemon' in the title sound wonderfully light and refreshing. Which is why I gawked a little when I read the recipe and discovered how much butter just the lemon cream requires: 21 tablespoons!! Yes, you read that right. 21. And 9 more in the tart. Did you just feel your arteries clog up upon reading that? I did! 

This was a tough one: I had to decide whether to play around and reduce the amount of butter or just go ahead and make it the way it is. But since this was my first attempt at making any kind of tart, I didn't want to mess it up. So, I chose the latter option, and decided to make mini-tarts and spread the love, so to speak, instead of making one large tart. 

The lemon cream: let's just call it extraordinary and leave it at that. Because I can't find a better word to describe how lovely it is: less sweet than lemon curd, tangy and silky with a burst of citrus flavor. In short: the stuff MY dreams are made of. 

Now if only it contained less butter! 

It took me just a little over 10 minutes to prepare the cream. I don't own a double boiler so I prepared it in a stainless steel bowl placed over a pan of simmering water. I wasn't really sure if I was getting it right - my candy thermometer crept up to almost 180F but the cream didn't look very thick to me. So I left it on for a few more minutes and then strained it into my food processor. My butter was very, very soft so it got incorporated pretty quickly. And my food processor didn't even protest, like Dorie had predicted it might. 

I still don't have much of a sense of smell and can only catch faint whiffs of stuff. Most of the time it is undertones that other people can't smell at all which makes me a freak of nature, so all I could smell was the eggs in this cream while I prepared it. I couldn't smell the lemon at all. While pouring it out into a jar for refrigeration, I decided I was going to give all the tarts away because I was definitely not going to like eating something that smelled so egg-ish. 

And then I licked my spatula. Oh my. 

I decided right then: I'm not sharing! 

And I also decided that I had to do one better than just simple Sweet Tart Dough and make it with either pecans or almonds. The lemon cream really deserved that little extra attention to detail.

So I reduced the amount of flour and made the Sweet Tart Dough with ground pecans like Dorie suggests. And I wasn't disappointed. I really loved the hint of nuttiness they lent to this tart.

Once again, the dough was easy to make and I didn't need to knead it at all because I figure I over-processed it and it formed a ball of dough right there in my food processor. I didn't have mini-tart molds with removable bottoms so I lined my mini tart pan with foil, which I greased lightly, pressed the dough in and froze the pan for half an hour. 

Since I have never made tarts before, I wasn't sure how thick the shells should be. And I had been warned by Susi that the dough could get flaky, so I kept them on the thicker side and made just 6. 

I ended up over-baking a little because I forgot that I was using a dark pan and should have reduced the temperature. No harm done: the tarts came out great. They were a little puffy in the middle so I pressed them down gently with the back of a spoon as soon as I got them out of the oven. I didn't put them back to bake longer even though the middles looked like they might be a little under-baked - I was too afraid I'd burn them because the edges were brown already. 

The only problem I had with this recipe was that when I took out the lemon cream out of the fridge the next morning the texture was not soft and pillowy as I had imagined, but a little on the harder side. I figured, I must have added a little more butter than called for: that is the only explanation I could come up with. Our sticks of butter here are not marked with tablespoon measures so we really  have to eye-ball it. 

Leaving the cream out on the counter for a short while solved the issue - it softened up and then I simply whipped it a little before adding to the tarts. The whipping seemed to have done the trick because I refrigerated the filled tarts, and hours later the cream was still soft. So it wasn't the quantity of butter after all. 

Will I make this again? Yes : but only if I can find a way to reduce the amount of butter in the cream. I really, really loved the lemon cream and artery-clogging it might be, but I am still going to save the leftover cream in my freezer and think up other uses for it. I dipped some gingersnaps in it & I loved the combination of flavors so it could be great as a filling for gingersnap sandwiches. Or something. I'll find a way to use it.

I'm beginning to think that every recipe in this book is extraordinary & I'm loving Baking With Dorie.

Check out what my fellow bakers Susi and Elizabeth have done with their Extraordinary Lemon Cream Tarts. 

For the recipe, follow me . . 

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins - Baking With Dorie

This is the first thing that my baking buddy Susi and I have baked out of Dorie Greenspan's book Baking: From My Home To Yours, for our Baking with Dorie Challenge .

When I was starting out, I thought about halving this recipe because I wasn't sure anybody at my house would care for anything lemon-flavored. I was pleasantly surprised when no one turned them away and my kids even asked for more. 

The poppy seeds add an interesting crunch to these subtly flavored muffins. Topped with the tart lemon glaze, they're simply wonderful. As usual, Dorie Greenspan does not disappoint.

The only variation I made to this recipe is that I used white poppy seeds because those are the ones that I had on hand. Aesthetically, they don't do much for the muffins because they aren't visible. I sprinkled some on the top of my muffins before baking them just so that they would show up for the photos. Before using, I did verify through research online that they would not make any difference to the flavor of this recipe because that is the last thing I wanted.