Almond Tea Cake

A garden club meeting at Linderhof -- the first of the year planning session -- necessitated a cake. Or so I felt. To have along with a cup of tea.

I love almond and I love tea cakes. Simple cakes that are not quite as dense as a poundcake but made with very basic ingredients -- flour, sugar, oil, levenings and flavorings.

And I always like to try new recipes! And so off to a favorite place I went -- the internet! Which for someone as old fashioned as I, is a strange place to be looking for new recipes.

A favorite blog is Chocolate and Zucchini written by Clotilde Dusoulier. She has great recipes and this one -- her Gateau au Yaourt is the kind of cake I was looking for.

But I also wanted an almond cake so I added some almond extract and substituted sherry for the rum.

And to gild the lily, I topped it with a glaze that I found on a recipe for Almond Scented Tea Cake that friend Mile High Baker had posted on the Contessa's Kitchen Food Board.

It is a good cake. And moist. So moist, in fact, that one guest thought, because of the almond flavor, that the cake was made with almond paste!
There was just enough left over for breakfast the next morning. It was as good with morning coffee as it was with evening tea.

Almond Tea Cake

(or Gateau au Yaourt from Chocolate and Zucchini)

(with modifications)

2 eggs

1 cup whole milk, plain unsweetened yogurt

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 cups flour

1 1/2 t. baking powder

1/2 t. baking soda

1 t. pure vanilla

1 t. almond extract (my modification)

1 T. sherry (my modification -- original recipe says rum)

Preheat the oven to 350. Line the bottom of a round (10 inch) cake pan with parchment paper and grease the sides. In a large mixing bowl, gently combine the yogurt, eggs, sugar, vanilla, almond extract, oil and sherry. In another bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Add the flour mixture to the yogurt mixture and blend together (don't overwork the dough) Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan, and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until the top is golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean. Let stand for 10 minutes, and transfer onto a rack to cool.

GLAZE:

1/4 cup orange juice

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 t. almond extract

Combine the ingredients and mix well. Drizzle over the warm cake.

It's Friday -- which means that it's Foodie Friday. We all like to eat and it's always fun to see what everyone fixes this Friday. Please join Michael at Designs by Gollum to see what has been cooking this week.