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Grapefruit yogurt cake

I was going to work out, but instead I baked a cake.

I blame the New York Times. I was being industrious and looking up something work-related when the NYT wedding announcement of one of our clients popped up, so of course I had to go look at that, and then they had their list of frequently emailed articles on the side, and one thing led to another.

So I made Ina Garten's lemon yogurt cake, but with grapefruit zest instead of lemon because ever since making grapefruit pancakes a few weeks ago I have fallen in love with grapefruit. (Except, after tasting it, I think it would have been better with lemon.)

Dorie Greespan has almost the same recipe, and I borrowed her technique of rubbing the zest and sugar together. I decreased the sugar to a little under 3/4 cup, but I used superfine sugar because it was all I had on hand, and I decreased the olive oil to 1/3 cup.

This was a lovely light-tasting cake to eat warm out of the oven. When it came out, I just wanted to pick up the little golden-brown loaf and eat it like a sandwich. It wasn't terribly unhealthy, and the best part was that it came together in under ten minutes, dirtying only a few measuring cups, one bowl, and one spatula. (I didn't bother to separate wet and dry ingredients, just dumped everything in. And I didn't whisk, and the batter was lumpy, but the cake turned out fine.)

I confessed to JW that I used up some yogurt that expired in February and a really old YoBaby in this recipe, and he said, "Yogurt is already bad. That's the whole point of yogurt."

The next day the cake was still good, but seemed more dense and moist. A little slice was plenty. And the olive oil seemed more pronounced in a way I didn't really like. I wonder if a neutral oil mixed with a nut oil, like grapeseed and walnut, would work. Next time we have unexpected visitors and I want to whip up something using pantry ingredients, I'll try a variation.

Full post as published by Magic Cookie on March 19, 2009 (boomark / email).