Oh So Colson

I really like making cake with yogurt and I like eating it for breakfast. It’s unique flavour probably arises principal flavouring ingredient is yogurt. But it isn’t necessarily the principal ingredient if you start to examine the different recipes that are available either by typing ‘yogurt cake’ in a search engine or by searching through one’s cookbooks. Indeed, this cake seems to be ‘de mode’ from what I can tell from reading various blogs devoted the topic of food and eating. This cake also seems to have originated in France from every account that I’ve come across. I couldn’t find it in my copy of the Joy of Cooking but I found it in the Silver Spoon (Italy’s classic cookbook for housewives) and in a cookbook by Nigella Lawson, and another on Turkish food by Claudia Roden. Lawson’s version is called “Baby Bunts” and her version requires melted butter, bunt tins, and the resulting cakes are subsequently removed from their tins and iced in lemon icing.

I first came across a recipe for this cake in a book written by Marcelle Hazan (who writes about Italian cuisine) but her recipe differs from that published by Clotilde Dusoulier (in her book titled Chocolate and Zucchini) whose recipes are predominately French. I’ve used both recipes several times. Both have different quantities of similar ingredients but Hazan’s has some fundamental differences. Her recipe entitled “Yogurt and Sambucco” rather than just a Yogurt Cake consequently it contains Sambucco. It like the recipe in Dusoulier’s book has oil but almost half of the volume of flour is cornflour (not cornstarch). Hazan’s recipe also contains one more egg than Dusoulier’s recipe and has triple the quantity of the flavourings. Dosoulier recommends adding one teaspoon of vanilla and possibly a tablespoon of rum, while Hazan recommends three tablespoons of Sambucco. Furthermore, Dusoulier’s recipe uses double the quantity of yogurt. I’ve found several recipes which use oil including one by Dorie Greenspan who seems to be, from the baking and cooking contingent who have blogs, as a ‘good cook who specialises in desserts’. Her recipe for yogurt cake utilises extra-virgin olive oil but although it probably gave the cake an interesting flavour when combined with lemon zest (or rosemary) but I really don’t like the greasiness that the oil causes in a cake’s texture. The cake will taste terrible if the baker concerned doesn’t know the age and the quality of the oil. The character of the cake, I suspect, probably changes if virgin olive oil is used since it probably shifts from a delicate cake that can be accompanied perhaps by fruit and even cheese to something that’s savory. The oil probably provides a high level of ‘moistness’ to the cake which is good but it can also be achieved by melted butter. I prefer moist cakes I dislike greasy oily cakes since I associate cakes which have that ‘glossy look to them’ with mass produced cakes found in chain supermarkets.

Both Hazan’s and Dusoulier’s recipes work and taste delicious even if you swap the oil for melted butter. I’d recommend both recipes since they are versatile, easy, and are delicious regardless of any little changes in the choice of additional flavourings: grated lemon zest, chocolate, orange zest, vanilla, orange juice, Cointreau, rosemary, vanilla etc. All of the recipes that I’ve found have the same basic ingredients but vary in the type of the oil, the number of eggs, the flavours used, and whether self-raising or plain flour are used and whether the flour component contains cornmeal and not just wheat flour.