time for toast

On Saturday night some friends and I went to the Pakuranga Night Market for dinner. I had fried pork buns and mini donuts on a stick:

The donut flavours from top to bottom were coffee crumb, hazelnut, white chocolate rainbow sprinkle and cookies and cream. I was disappointed that they didn't have green tea flavour. I also had a drink which was made of 100% strawberries and blueberries. It tasted like strawberry syrup, but in a good way. There was a lot more sweet stuff than any other time I have been to the Night Market so I also shared a lemon tart with Shelby.

Speaking of lemon, we had a shared morning tea at work today to welcome some new employees. This was my contribution:

Lemon Yoghurt Cake

recipe by Alison & Simon Holst from here

You will need:

  • 1 and a half cups caster sugar
  • zest of two lemons
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1/2 cup canola oil
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 cup yoghurt
  • juice of two lemons
  • 1 and a half cups self raising flour
  • tablespoon of soft butter
  • 1 cup icing sugar
  • 1 tsp passionfruit essence (or more)

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.
  2. Use the small side of your grater to grate lemon zest into a large bowl.
  3. Put oil, eggs and sugar into bowl with lemon zest and whisk with a fork.
  4. Cut your zested lemons in half and then squeeze their juice into the bowl, picking out any pips with your fingers.
  5. Add salt and yoghurt and mix again.
  6. Add flour and stir until somewhat smooth (you may never get it completely smooth depending on what kind of yoghurt you are using, and this is perfectly fine!)
  7. Pour mixture into two sandwich cake tins and bake for 20 minutes. The tops should be golden brown and a cake tester should come out clean.
  8. Once the cakes have cooled, beat the butter, icing sugar and essence with a hand hold beater.
  9. Spread icing over whatever cake you have designated for the bottom and then carefully press the other cake down on top.

This cake is very moist. I have made it so many times with different icing flavours in the middle - I have tried vanilla icing, chocolate icing and lemon icing. Today's passionfruit icing may be the best yet. I have also tried it with a variety of yoghurt flavours as I just use whatever I have in the fridge at the time. Today I used apricot yoghurt, and I think the tang of the slightly sour apricot suits the lemon flavour quite well. I have also tried strawberry, which is nice too and depending on the yoghurt brand can give the cake a pink tinge and lemon for an even stronger lemon hit.