A spate of unsatisfactory bakes- that's what happened to me in the past couple of weeks. Like a row of flop movies- Aaw, poor joke here, excuse me:-). A souffle which rose - but not high enough, a genoise which did not seem tall enough to make a birthday cake out of, a chocolate cake which got the perfect ganache drape, but I messed up with the decoration- too big an 'Oops' to make it to the blog. My dessert did not set well enough to slice it, Agar-agar - u let me down:-(. Add the extremely temperamental electricity supply in Namma Bengaluru - would put off the most passionate of bakers I guess. Power supply seems to be so much more consistent in the past few days- Touch-wood!!
Yesterday after a long time, my oven smiled on me again. Whew!! I had seen this Orange Yogurt Cake on Pavani's blog here and had instantly bookmarked it (among scores of many many recipes, don't know when I will ever try them all!!). I love oranges in a BIG way, I don't know how many dozens of them I ate when I was carrying my first one - so much that hubby started worrying about it:-). Oranges in bakes is something I absolutely adore. I had oranges in my fridge and this seemed the perfect recipe to try - low fat, quick and super easy.
It was easily one of the tastiest tea cakes I have baked- super spongy, moist, refreshing and deliciously zesty. Thanks Pavani for sharing this recipe and reminding me of the forgotten Martha Stewart website. This cake is something which is going to be on my favorites list for a long time to come..
You can find the original recipe here.
Makes one 8-inch round cake
- Unsalted butter, softened, for pan
- 1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
- 1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons powdered sugar( only 2 tablespoons go into the batter)
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
- Pinch of salt
- 1/2 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon grated orange zest, plus 1 tablespoon orange juice
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 2 large oranges (1 zested into thin strips, both segmented)
- Confectioners' sugar, for dusting
Directions
Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius(350 F). Butter an 8-inch round cake pan. Sift flour, 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar, the baking powder, baking soda, salt. Whisk together yogurt, oil, orange zest and juice, egg, and vanilla in a bowl. Fold in the wet mixture into the flour mixture. Pour into pan. Bake until a cake tester comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Let cool on a wire rack. Dust one table spoon sugar on top of the cake(optional)This cake tastes delightful by itself and needs no frosting . yeah, the glaze I have used here was purely for the kids. No- it was for the kids and the blog pictures;-).
My verdict: The perfect tea cake, will surely make this again, taking care to add only 2 tablespoons sugar (I overlooked this small detail in the original recipe, one tablespoon was for dusting on top) into the batter. Too late I figured out why the cake tasted a wee bit sweeter... nevertheless it was a wonderful cake.
The only shortcoming in the cake: the smallish size...sigh..!!
