I have been so impatient to start baking from Sweeter Off the Vine. I love Yossy Arefi's Apt 2B Baking Co blog; I want to make everything she cooks, but the arrival of her cookbook meant I got to test the recipes and post about them here! Reading through Sweeter Off the Vine the day it arrived (last Tuesday), I picked out about 5 things I felt I needed to make immediately and tried to plan my week such that I could pull them all off. I haven't quite had time because work likes to get in the way of my baking plans, but I cannot seem to stop eating what I have baked, and I'll be posting the top three within the week because they were outrageously good and everyone should be baking along with Yossy.
I am a huge lemon poppyseed baked-good-of-any-variety fan, so this cake immediately caught my eye. Yossy's cherry poppyseed yogurt cake is so good even David Lebovitz has blogged about it. I feel like maybe that's all I need to say. Go make it and see how right we are about this scrumptious cake. I brought it in to work (as per usual), but it was so good I hogged ⅓ of the cake for myself and only gave the rest away to a few special people. They all said it was fantastic - not too sweet, dense but very moist, and perfect for eating with an afternoon coffee or a light dessert.
Yossy's cherry poppyseed yogurt cake recipe turned out flawlessly for me, but it is also quite adaptable - feel free to use lemons instead of limes, berries or a different stone fruit instead of cherries, add chocolate chips instead of citrus, or skip the streusel and soak the top after baking with a citrus simple syrup or glaze, etc. My main suggestion is make it (duh) and to be sure to use a good butter for the streusel topping, because the butter flavor definitely came through on mine.
Original source: Sweeter Off the Vine
Cherry and Poppyseed Yogurt Cake from Sweeter Off the Vine
Ingredients
Streusel
- ¼ cup (35g) flour
- 2 tablespoons rolled oats
- 2 tablespoons sugar granulated or light brown
- 2 teaspoons poppy seeds
- pinch salt
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
Cake
- 1 ½ cups (210g) flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- 2 tablespoons poppy seeds
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¾ cup (150g) granulated sugar
- grated zest of 2 limes*
- ½ cup (120ml) neutral vegetable oil
- 3 large eggs at room temperature
- 1 cup (225g) plain Greek yogurt**
- 2-4 tablespoons (60 ml) freshly squeezed lime* juice (from the 2 limes)
- 1 ½ cups (210g) pitted cherries (fresh or frozen), sweet or sour
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC). Butter & flour (or make a parchment paper sling for) a 9x5-inch (23cm) loaf pan.
Streusel
- Mixing the ¼ cup flour, oats, sugar, poppy seeds, & salt in a small bowl. Add the butter and mix in with your fingertips, until small pebbly crumbs form. Set aside.
Cake
- Whisk the 1 ½ cups flour, baking powder, poppy seeds and salt together in a small bowl, then set aside.
- In a large bowl, use your fingers to massage the sugar and lime zest together, so the citrus oil saturates the sugar. Whisk in the oil, eggs, yogurt and lime juice. Add the flour mixture all at once, stirring with a rubber spatula until just incorporated. Fold in half of the cherries, then scrape the batter into the prepared pan.
- Scatter the remaining cherries over the top, then sprinkle with an even layer of streusel. Bake the cake until puffed up & golden brown on top. It should feel set in the center and a toothpick inserted in the center will come out clean when done, about 50 minutes.
- Cool completely on a wire rack before slicing.
- This cake will keep about 2-3 days well-wrapped at room temperature or can be frozen for longer storage.
Notes
*You could easily substitute lemon for the limes.
**I used nonfat Greek yogurt here, but feel free to use a full-fat plain yogurt.
