Lemon Yoghurt Cake

From a la grecque: our Greek table, Pam Talimanidis, Hardie Grant Books, 2009.

I don’t usually do much cake baking but this lemon yoghurt cake appealed.

I turned on the oven to heat to 180ºC and then took out the electric mixer. In it went 125g softened butter and 220g caster sugar. These were beaten until they had combined and become pale. I then added two eggs and beat them in one at a time. Once this was done I added 250ml yoghurt, 3 tablespoons lemon juice and the zest of a lemon. Once these were combined well 430g self-raising flour and ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda went in. This made quite a firm mixture. I placed it in a lined spring-form tin to bake in the oven for 45 minutes.

When the cake was almost ready I made the syrup. In a saucepan I brought to the boil 125g sugar, 125ml water, the zest of a lemon cut into fine strips and the juice of half a lemon. I let the mixture simmer for 5 minutes and it was ready. The cake came from the oven and the hot syrup was poured over.

This was a very dry cake, even with the syrup. In fact the next day I had to make up another batch of syrup to pour over. This improved it somewhat. I was disappointed with the cake as the flavour, despite the lemon juice and zest, was lacking and it was very dry. It was improved a little with the extra syrup but that was not enough to really save it.

Taste: ✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔