When Suelle recently posted her Chocolate and Marzipan Yogurt Cake I was instantly taken with it - the flavours sounded delicious and the texture of her cake looked fabulous. I really wanted to try it out. Well, I can't think what I did wrong - I must have missed something vital out of the recipe or changed something without realising what kind of impact it would have, but my first attempt was an utter disaster. Totally. I am entirely to blame for this, as I trust Suelle's recipes and know that I did make some changes.
I couldn't quite believe that it was such a disaster though, so in the interests of fairness to the recipe I made it again, verbatim to Suelle's recipe. Yay, complete success! So I don't know what went wrong the first time, but I do know that this is a very workable recipe and I'm very glad I gave it another go - I would have hated to have wrongly written it off.
This cake is made with low fat yogurt and oil rather than butter, inkeeping with Suelle's current baking of low saturated fat recipes. I'm sure I've said before how surprised I am with the variety of different oil based recipes out there - and this is one of them.
For the original post please visit Suelle's blog here.
Chocolate yogurt oil cake
Ingredients
170g plain flour
30g cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
100g caster sugar
100g light muscovado sugar
250g low fat yogurt
110g light olive oil
3 large eggs
1/2tsp chocolate essence (optional)
150g plain chocolate (72%), chopped coarsely
Method
- Preheat the oven to gas 4/180C. Grease and line an 8" (20cm) springform tin.
- Weigh the flour, cocoa and sugars into a large bowl, add the salt and baking powder and mix well to combine.
- Measure the yogurt into a jug/bowl and beat in the eggs. Add the oil and chocolate essence if using and whisk to roughly amalgamate.
- Mix the wet ingredients into the dry and when well combined mix in the chopped chocolate.
- Spoon into the prepared tin and bake. Suelle says 50 minutes, but I found mine took a bit longer than this to be done. And then I probably left it in a bit longer again because I kept forgetting that finding a piece of molten chocolate always makes a cake look less done!
I must remember next time to use a different chocolate - I used Green and Black's 72% cooking chocolate. It doesn't tend to reharden very well after cooking, remaining quite soft, so I want to try something different next time. Tastes good though!
Verdict - I'm very glad that I managed to make this successfully! It was a very moist cake indeed. It wasn't the most chocolately cake I've ever made - I suppose this is a function of the oil rather than butter which would provide a flavour I'm more familiar with. I think that the olive oil here gives a completely different texture to the soft, tender crumb of a cake made with butter. It seemed somehow sturdier and although it smelled absolutely fabulous when I took off the lid of its storage tin (the chocolate essence!) the depth of chocolate flavour wasn't quite there.
However, having said this, some of my colleagues really, really loved this cake, and all of them enjoyed it, so a definite success and good to have a wide repertoire of cakes to be able to make for all situations. Thank you Suelle, for bringing this one to my attention!
12 comments:
This sounds lovely C! I'm a huge fan of yogurt in cake after trying Dan Lepard's stone fruit yogurt cake (thank you for that wonderful inspiration)- I'll definitely give this a go!
So pleased you got a good cake this time round.
It makes such a difference when you can trust a recipe writer and just know that it is worth a second go!
I will definitely bookmark this recipe. I'm trying to cut down on sat fat too!
C, I'm impressed with your determination. Glad it worked 2nd time around. So is the chocolate essence not very chocolatey then? You'd have thought using that as well as cocoa would have done it. If I'm putting choc chips into cakes, I usually use G&Bs 70% eating bar. I think the cooking one is designed to stay softer.
BTW, I received the GBBO book last week. Thanks again. Haven't got around to making anything yet, but I've really been enjoying reading it in bed every night ;-)
If you fall off the horse, get back on and ride it again! Good for you baking the second cake :)
I love yogurt cakes and this looks like no exception - it looks so moist! Such a treat :)
Hi, I'm going to have a go at making your delicious-looking chocolate cake this weekend!
Good on you. Looks lovely. Any cake with yogurt in it is a happy cake for me :-)
some days I play with ingredients and find it just doesn't work - glad it finally produced the goods - sounds delicious - I love the slight sourness of yoghurt in baking
Kate - thanks! This cake is completely different to Dan's stone fruit yogurt cake though. Let me know what you think if you make it.
Suelle - so am I! I can't think what I did wrong last time. Thanks for your helpful tips!
Foodycat - it does indeed
Anna - this is a great low sat fat cake!
Choclette - the chocolate essence is very chocolately in a fragrant way, I think it's just that the different texture of the cake made it difficult to explain. Yes, you're right about the eating vs cooking chocolate, I just tend to forget!
Glad you're enjoying the book, thanks for letting me know!
Mel - thanks!
Lucy - it was indeed moist!
lovefoodpinny - I hope you enjoy it, let me know what you think!
Brydie - yogurt is generally a great cake ingredient isn't it!
Johanna - I think I must have made some assumptions that weren't true the first time round. Never mind, second time is good!
I made this & was really disappointed. It looked great when it came out of the oven. I expected a light fluffy sponge & I got a solid heavy cake. I used 85% dark chocolate & 1 tsp chocolate essence (£3.99 !!) and it still wasn't that chocolaty. In fact the main aroma & flavour was of olive oil ! Not nice.
Cake is best served warm but I won't be making it again. Great for dieters because a small slice of this sits in your stomach for the rest of the day & you won't want anything else !
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