Lemon Yogurt Cake

Our grocery story does this thing where it takes money off of dairy products that are going to expire soon to encourage you to buy them. I'm sure most grocery stores do this but our store seems to do it WEEKS in advance. This means I go crazy and buy all the good things for really cheap and then get home and figure out ways to use them.

One of these things was a tub of lemon yogurt. I realized when I got home that 1. David wasn't going to help me eat it because he was sick and he doesn't do dairy when he's sick. 2. It was low fat, which basically means it's loaded with chemicals and I've been trying to buy the full fat version of things and 3. I don't really like lemon. I opened the yogurt anyway, hoping for the best. It was pretty disgusting. I had to choke down my little bowlful.

I decided to bake with it because I know I have baked using yogurt before. I had a hard time finding a recipe that didn't use Greek yogurt and I wasn't sure if the consistency of this really thin, runny low fat yogurt was going to work out because Greek yogurt is so thick. I decided to try one anyway. It didn't use any expensive ingredients and it would use up my yogurt. I choose this recipe. I did make quite a few changes though so read mine carefully.

These are my ingredients (notice I doubled it so I could use up all my yogurt)

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups lemon yogurt
2 cups sugar
6 large eggs
splash of lemon extract
splash pure vanilla extract
1 cup vegetable oil

I didn't make the glaze and it tastes really great without it. I also realized as I was typing this up that I forgot to double the baking powder and salt. Oops. It was only supposed to take 50 minutes in the oven but it wasn't done then. It ended up taking 59 minutes. Next time, I might set the timer for 55 and see then.

Also, not following the directions, I mixed everything in my electric mixer in the order they told me to (the wet ingredients first, then slowly add in the dry). Then I added the oil (also with the mixer, not a spatula). I'm not sure if this made any difference in taste or texture but it did make it easy to prepare! I should also mention while I was making this, David was husking and blanching 20 pounds of corn we got from his Grandma's garden that we were freezing (we ended up with 7 quarts! Awesome!). So our kitchen was pretty busy and messy by the end of all this!

We both rate this recipe a 9/10 but next time I also might try to remember to double the baking powder and salt if I have to double it again. As much as I liked this, hopefully I won't have any more gross yogurt to use up.