Lemon yogurt cake with raspberry sauce

I had a reunion on Friday night for my trippees from the community service trip I led a few weeks ago to the Orient Land Trust down in the San Luis Valley. Dinner and dessert both went quite well- I made savory crepes with a vegetable egg scramble and some stir-fried rainbow chard, tofu, and onions on the side. For dessert, and the recipe I'm sharing with you today, I came up with a lemon yogurt cake topped with vanilla icing and a raspberry sauce. It came out wonderfully! The yogurt in the cake keeps it moist and dense, and the sweet and sour flavors comes together to create a perfect blend.

Ingredients
(adapted from SmittenKitchen's lime yogurt cake)

For the lemon yogurt cake:
•1 C plain unsweetened yogurt
•1/3 C vegetable oil
•1 C sugar
•zest of one lemon
•1/4 C lemon juice
•2 eggs
•1 2/3 C all-purpose flour
•1 1/2 t baking powder
•1/2 t baking soda
•1/8 t salt

For the icing: use your favorite vanilla icing recipe or favorite storebought (although we all know my thoughts about storebought...)! Stay away from a buttercream on this cake, however.

For the sauce:
• 12 ounces fresh or frozen raspberries (if using frozen, start with half the water)
•1/4 C water
•3 T sugar
•1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, depending on how sweet you'd like your sauce

Directions
For the cake: Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Grease a 9-inch cake pan and line the bottom with baking parchment if the pan is not springform. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the yogurt, oil, sugar, lemon zest and juice. Add eggs one at a time and mix well. Mix flour baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a mixing bowl, and add dry mixture to yogurt mixture. Stir with a spoon until just combined. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until the top is golden brown and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer pan to a cooling rack and let stand for 10 minutes. Run a knife around the pan to loosen. If you’re using the springform pan, remove the sides. Otherwise, flip the cake onto a plate and flip it back on the rack.

For the sauce: Combine raspberries, water, sugar and lemon juice in blender or food processor. Purée until smooth, then press through a fine mesh sieve to remove the seeds. Cover and refrigerate until cold.

Frost cake and pour syrup over individual slices. Enjoy!

Tres Leches cake

In White Center, there is a bakery called the Salvadorean Bakery that serves the most delicious tres leches cake I have ever had. It's been a staple in my family for birthdays and the occasional weeknight treat when everyone needs a pick-me-up. For Camila's birthday, I decided to try my hand at this delicacy. The cake was devoured that night, and I had to force everyone's forks away for two minutes so I could snap a photo. This is a very rich cake, but the moisture makes it impossible to stop eating. Often, there is also a liqueur poured in with the tres leches mixture at the end, but I opted out on this occasion, sticking with the traditional.


Ingredients
(the least vegan cake you'll ever make)
1 C white sugar
5 egg yolks
5 egg whites
1/3 C milk
1 t vanilla
1 C all-purpose flour
1 1/2 t baking powder
14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
12 oz. can evaporated milk
1 pint heavy whipping cream

Directions
Preheat oven to 350˚F. Butter and flour a 9-inch springform pan (I don't have one here, so I just used a 9-inch cake pan). In a large mixing bowl, beat the egg yolks with 3/4 C sugar until doubled in volume. Add in milk, flour, baking powder, and vanilla and mix well. In a smaller bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form, and then slowly beat in the rest of the sugar. Fold egg whites into batter, and pour into pan. Bake for 45 minutes.
While cake bakes, mix 1/4 C whipping cream, condensed milk, and evaporated milk together. Discard approximately one cup of this mixture, a little less if you'd like your cake even more moist. Let cake cool, and then pierce the top all over with a fork. Pour milk mixture over the top slowly until absorbed. Place in refrigerator. Whip the rest of the whipping cream with a bit of sugar and vanilla, and then frost the cake with whipped cream. Garnish with fruit and serve chilled.

Enjoy!

The Flavor Thesaurus

As a celebrator of Chrismakuh, Christmas is often a time to realize what you wanted for Hannukah and forgot to ask for. Just kidding, sort of. But in this case, for Christmas I got a book I have been dying for after reading about it countless times on PurpleFoodie: The Flavor Thesaurus, by Niki Segnit. I was browsing through it the day after Christmas, skimming all of the mouth-watering flavor pairings, and one that I stumbled upon happened to be Blueberry and Vanilla. There was a delicious-sounding recipe for a blueberry vanilla cake, but I wanted to see what more I could do with all of the frozen blueberries we have sitting in our freezer from this summer. I did a little google-ing, and came across a recipe for blueberry vanilla cupcakes with blueberry ganache. I did a little adapting to make it into a cake for our belated family Christmas dinner and gift exchange.

Ingredients
Recipe adapted from Bake It After All's Blueberry Vanilla Cupcake recipe
Cupcakes
1 C flour
2 t baking powder
1 t salt
6 T unsalted butter
1 C sugar
1 t vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 C milk
1 C blueberry puree*

*Puree, as directed by Bake It After All: Fresh or frozen blueberries, pureed in a food processor or blender and strained through a fine-mesh sieve. Approximately 1 cup of frozen blueberries was enough for me to get 1/2 cup puree. To facilitate straining the puree, whisk the blueberry mixture as you strain it through the sieve.

Helpful hint: If you are using frozen blueberries, run them under a little warm water first to thaw them. They'll puree much faster that way.

Blueberry ganache
12 oz semisweet chocolate (you can use chocolate chips if you'd like!)
2 C frozen blueberries
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C heavy cream
4 T butter

Directions
For the cupcakes: Preheat oven to 350˚F. Mix dry ingredients together and set aside. Whisk the milk and blueberry puree together and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time to mixing bowl, and then add the vanilla. Alternate adding dry ingredient mixture and blueberry/milk mixture to the mixing bowl--half at a time worked for me. Mix until just combined, and pour on to cookie sheet lined with baking parchment. Spread evenly; the cake will be divided into two layers later. Bake for 20-25 minutes.

For the ganache: Place chocolate/chocolate chips in mixing bowl and set aside. Heat blueberries and sugar over medium heat in a small saucepan until mixture becomes sauce-like and bubbly. Pour into sieve and strain over the chocolate. In a saucepan, bring cream and butter to just below boiling over medium heat, and pour into chocolate mixture. Let sit for 30 seconds, and then stir mixture until smooth. Once cooled, you can chill the ganache as well if you would like to pipe it, but since I was making a cake instead of cupcakes, as the recipe called for, I used it when it was still more liquid than frosting consistency.

Once the cake is out of the oven, slice it into two equal-sized rectangles. Put a layer of ganache on top of the bottom layer, and then stack the second. Frost the rest of the cake and top with blueberries and dusted powdered sugar.


Unfortunately the blueberries were a little less present in taste than I was hoping for, but I used the extra blueberries I had left over from straining to put in between cake layers with the ganache, which added just a little more flavor. I'd even put in a few more next time. One of the best things about this cake is the lovely lavender color it adopts once you've added the blueberry puree. I dusted the top with powdered sugar and lined it with blueberries. The presentation could have been a little better--but at least everyone devoured it!