Berry Yogurt Cake with Chocolate Chips

This recipe is an adaptation from here. It has a very posh French name: Gâteau au Yaourt à la Framboise, a.k.a Raspberry Yogurt Cake.

A basic Yogurt Cake is just a very simple, moist and fluffy cake. It lends itself to a great variations such as the one below. You can add citrus juice, zest, or peel for a delicious lemon or orange cake, you can add chocolate chips or nuts to the batter, you can slice the baked cake in two and spread a layer of jam in the middle, you can frost the cake with a chocolate frosting -- whatever strikes your fancy. I decided to throw in some chocolate chips along with mixed berries just because they have been sitting in the far-reached corner of the fridge for quite some time now.

I'm using the almond meal that came from my Homemade Almond Milk. You can either buy from the store or simply grind some.

• 1 C homemade yogurt
• 1 C natural cane sugar
• 1/4 C virgin coconut oil
• 1 1/2 C unbleached all-purpose flour, sifted
• 1/4 C almond meal
• 3 eggs
• 1 TB baking powder
• 300 g mixed berries (fresh or frozen): strawberry, blueberry, raspberry
  
• 1/2 C unsweetened chocolate chips (optional)
  

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Copiously grease and flour a 9" springform pan.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine yogurt, oil and sugar with a spatula. Add eggs, one at a time, stirring after each addition.
   
3. In a medium bowl combine flour, baking powder and almond meal. Add flour mixture to the batter in three or four batches, and stir until just combined. Do not over mix.

4. Pour half the batter into the cake pan. Cover evenly with half of the mixed berries and half of the chocolate chips (if using). Pour the other half of the batter, and arrange the other half of the raspberries on top. Sprinkle with the other half of the chocolate chips (if using).

5. Put into the oven to bake, for 50 to 60 minutes, until the top is springy and a cake tester comes out clean.

6. Let rest on the counter for ten minutes, then run a knife around the cake to loosen it, and turn out on a rack to cool completely.

Superfood for Siti "Hazel" Hamzah (who made me shriek): Homemade Yogurt

Can you see the difference in density? The one on the left was taken just after pouring the warm milk into the starter. It took a mere 3 hours for the yogurt to grow (right). It should be denser and thicker than this after chilling.

Yogurt has been called a "superfood" for many good reasons. Not only does it have high calcium content, protein and B Vitamins, most importantly, the live cultures in yogurt help maintain a delicate balance of microorganisms in the body, promoting healthy digestive and immune systems.

Regardless of nutrition, yogurt is delicious and an important ingredient. Nearly every nation's cuisine has a recipe that uses yogurt. Besides, using it for smoothie and as a accompaniment of cereal, I also use yogurt for soups, salads, cakes, etc. Hopefully you'll get to see some of them in the not too distant future.

There are plenty information out there for making homemade yogurt. I found most of them overly cautious. You can read this for more detailed instructions. You'll read recipe that calls for powdered milk. It gives a thicker products, which I don't find missing without (is it because I use whole milk instead of low fat?).

Although I do go for (not too pricey) organic products, I found it unnecessary in this case. What's more important is to have a good starter yogurt. You want to get a starter that says "active/ live culture". Most brands on the shelf contain either Lactobacillus bulgaricus and/or Streptococcus thermophilus. I've seen yogurt in the West that has up to 6 types of bacteria. Typically the more types it has, the faster the fermentation.

Being in this part of the world helps to make certain steps easy. For example storing the culture. I simply keep the culture away from light, either in a cupboard or inside the oven for up to 8 hours before I chill it in refrigerator. Although a typical recipe stresses the importance of thermometer, again, I have been culturing yogurt without it. I heat the milk to smoke but not boiling. Then I let the milk cool to good for touch (kind of like testing milk temperature before you feed the baby, I guess).

There have been a few occasions when I totally spaced out. Just to share:
1. I store the culture in refrigerator. Nothing happened after two days. I then transferred it to an enclosed cupboard, and it grew.
2. I heated the oven without realizing that I had stored the culture in there earlier on. Despite the subjection to 200C, the yogurt was still consumable after cooling and chilling. I have no idea if the bacteria were still alive since I didn't cultivate the oven-roasted yogurt.
3. The milk boiled and foamed over. The yogurt still grew but to less dense consistency and the subsequent culture didn't serve as good a starter.
4. I pour the milk when it's still hot. Result as No. 3.

Another thing I found unnecessary is measurement - as long as it's not way off the scale, say, 1Tablespoon yogurt to 1L milk...... DUH! I'm a advocate of pure and whole: pure cream, whole milk. Nothing low-fat for me; I'd rather balance out the fat content with real foods than to subject my body to unnecessarily processed foods.

Without further ado, here's how I stubbornly turned a blind eye to the many kind advises and cheat my way to preparing my morning stable - YOGURT

Ingredients:
Whole milk
Yogurt with active live culture, as starter

Take the yogurt out and let it sit in room temperature as you prepare the milk.
Heat milk to smoking point and let cool to room temperature. Pour over the starter and stirring to allow the culture to blend well. Store the culture away from light. Depends on the yogurt starter, sometimes 2 - 4 hours is all it needs. Longest would be 8 hours. Let it chill in refrigerator before serving.