Lower Fat Lemon Yoghurt Cake

The first time my now mother-in-law cooked for me she made the most wonderful butternut squash and cream cheese soup using a great recipe from The New Dairy Cookbook by Sue Ashworth. This is a great book that is a modern version of the Milk Marketing Board's dairy cookbooks that graced my own mothers shelves. After borrowing the book for an extended loan I decided that I should invest in a copy of my own. By definition the book does not always lend itself to low fat and healthy cooking but the availability of low fat dairy products and a little tweaking can produce some very tasty low fat meals.

My Lower Fat Lemon Yogurt Cake is adapted from the books Natural Yogurt Orange Cake and the result is a zingy lemon cake with less guilt.

Lower Fat Lemon Yogurt Cake

Adapted from New Dairy Cookbook's Natural Yogurt Orange Cake

(Serves 8 - 10)

150 g Stork Margarine, melted and cooled

2 lemons, juice and zest finely grated 

150 g golden caster sugar

150 g low fat natural yogurt

1 tsp vanilla extract

250 g self-raising flour

salt, pinch

2 medium eggs

• Preheat the oven to 155oC (fan). Grease a 24 cm round spring-form cake tin and line with baking parchment.
• Put the lemon juice in a jug and add 1 tbsp of the sugar, leave to one side.
• Put the lemon zest, sugar, margarine, yogurt, vanilla, flour, salt and eggs into a large mixing bowl. Beat thoroughly for 1 minute.
• Bake in the pre-heated oven and bake for around 1 hour until risen and golden.
• Place the cake, still in the tin on a cooling rack and pour over the lemon juice. Allow the cake to cool in the tin.

My cake looks considerably flatter than that in the book, this is probably due to the larger diameter of cake tin used. The original recipe also suggests putting orange slices on the top of the cake, I decided not to put lemon slices on top for fear of them being bitter after baking.