Orange Yogurt Cake

Delightful!

















Well I am back from vacation and wishing I was still at the beach. This past week I was fortunate enough to spend a week on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina with three of my girlfriends. Lucky us, we also spent a day and night in Savannah to further soak up the southern hospitality. This was our second annual trip visiting HHI and Savannah during the first week of May and we plan to keep up the tradition. We relaxed on the beach, biked the trials, shopped the outlets, and ate at glorious restaurants! You can expect to see some reviews of the local restaurants over the next couple weeks ( I need to sort out my pictures), but until I get those reviews up I will share with you some of the yummy treats I baked to bring on the trip. You see, my friends have come to expect that I bring some sort of baked good to everything, and I did not want to disappoint. In addition to the heavenly Orange Yogurt Cake pictured above, I also made a Key Lime and Coconut Yogurt Cake, S'mores Cookies, and Snickerdoodle Scones. You can expect to see those recipes soon.

I saw a recipe for Orange Sour Cream Loaf Cake on The Cooking Photographer and thought it would be the perfect recipe to substitute Greek yogurt. I was lucky enough to be contacted by Stoneyfield Farm Organic Yogurt to see if I would like to sample their new Greek Yogurt line Oikos and of course I jumped at the opportunity. We eat yogurt all the time in our house and often cook with it (in fact we made tzatziki just last night). The cake was amazing and I think the yogurt endhanced the texture and kept the cake moist for days. In addition, the yogurt was great on its own.

Orange Yogurt Cake
adapted from The Cooking Photographer

For the cake:

1 cup fat free Greek yogurt
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
Zest of 3 oranges
1 tsp real vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt
½ cup melted butter
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ cups all purpose flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a loaf pan.

In a medium bowl, mix together the baking powder and flour. In a seperate large bowl, beat together the granulated sugar, eggs, orange zest, vanilla extract, salt, and butter. Stir in the yogurt until combined. Add the flour mixture and mix until combined, being careful not to over mix.

Pour the cake batter into the loaf pan and bake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Wait for 10 minutes and carefully remove to a cooling rack.

For soaking warm cake:

1/3 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 Tablespoon granulated sugar

While the cake is cooking, add the orange juice and granulated sugar to a small sauce pan. Cook over medium high heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar is melted and the liquid is mainly clear. About 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

Place the cooling rack on top of a piece of wax paper. Spoon the mixture over the cake. Allow the cake to finish cooling.

For glazing cooled cake:

1 cup powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons fresh squeezed orange juice
2 teaspoons Orange Zest

Mix together powdered sugar and orange juice. Spoon glaze over the top and garnish with orange zest; let the cake set up overnight before serving.

(Note that I baked the cake in 4 miniature loaf pans as apposed to 1 large pan. It took approximately 30 minutes to bake, but you will need to monitor your cakes based on your oven).