Toffee Yogurt Cake & TOTAL Greek Yogurt

As some of you know, I'm a huge fan of using yogurt in cakes. I find that it helps them to rise, gives a good flavour, a smooth texture and keeps them nice and moist. So I was delighted to receive another delivery of TOTAL Greek Yogurt recently (see previous posts relating to this yogurt here and here), both full fat and 0% fat. I've found the 0% fat to be excellent in scones and soda breads although I did use the full fat in these Chocolate Chip Scones. The full fat is wonderful used in cakes, puddings and is also a perfect accompaniment to curry or Mexican food.

I was keen to get baking. I'd come across a one-mix chocolate sponge cake in The Chocolate Cookbook by Christine France that I recently borrowed from our local library. I've sadly neglected our public library in recent years and of course now they are threatened, I'm keen to save them. The "save our libraries" day a few Saturdays ago, kick started me into action and I staggered down the street with a pile of really good books.

Anyway, back to the sponge. I chose butter rather than the margarine used in the recipe (because in my opinion, butter is a more natural and healthier product than margarine) and changed the method. This was due to my usual trick of forgetting to take the butter out of the fridge well in advance of the exercise. To make the most of the yogurt in this cake, I thought I'd try making a yogurt ganache to sandwich the cakes together. I had no idea how this would work, but most things are worth trying at least once. Unusually, it used golden syrup in the mix and it was this that had caught my eye when browsing through the book. Another parcel I'd recently been sent (more about this in a later post) contained a bottle of toffee syrup. To be honest, there's a limit to how much toffee syrup I could use and it had been languishing in it's box for quite some time. So, substitute the toffee syrup for the golden syrup and away I go!

• Melted 6 oz unsalted butter in a bowl over hot water, then took off the heat.
• Mixed in 4oz light muscovado sugar.
• Stirred in 4 tbsp toffee syrup and 1/4 tsp salt then beat until all emulsified.
• Beat in 3 duck eggs.
• Sifted in 6oz flour (1/2 wholemeal, 1/2 white), 2 tbsp cocoa and 1 tsp baking powder.
• Mixed in 2 good tablespoons of full fat TOTAL Greek yogurt then poured the batter into two 21cm cake moulds (would recommend smaller sizes than these) and baked at 180C for 20 minutes.

• Melted 100g milk chocolate (G&B) with 1 tbsp toffee sauce.
• Stirred until smooth.
• Mixed in 2 good tablespoons of full fat TOTAL Greek yogurt and left to cool a little.
• Spread this over one of the cooled cakes with a palate knife then sandwiched the other cake on top.
• Dusted the top with a little icing sugar.

The cakes turned out to be a lot flatter than I would have liked. I think this was more to do with using cake moulds that were way too big rather than the lack of rising the cake actually did. Perhaps, as a result of using the melting method to make this cake, the end result was denser than I was expecting. This may not have been my most successful cake ever, but it was still very tasty. It had a nice consistency with very few crumbs, a good mouth feel and a pleasant toffee flavour with a yogurty tang. I was a little impatient with the ganache and put this on before it had set properly, but it tasted great and complemented the cake really well; I shall be using this again. When I asked CT what he thought the flavour was, he said cherry. Cherry, I queried? On trying it a second time, I could see what he meant. Don't ask me why.

For other recipes using yogurt click here.