It’s been a while since The Great British Bake Off has brought weekly joy to my life and of course, baking inspiration. The arrival of January,  in which so many want to watch their weight, has brought my motivation to make cake to a low point. Gâteau au yaourt doesn’t count in my mind as it contains yoghurt which is obviously healthy!

The more astute among you would have noticed from last week’s ‘day in the life of’ post that I’m currently reading ‘French kids don’t throw food.’ Although I’ve read this before,  as I approach weaning with Thomas, I’m keen to remind myself of different cultures and the way they do things. This book, written by  Pamela Druckerman (an American) , is an account of living in Paris and the many differences she encountered in how people raise their children. It’s a good read and a nice reminder that there is not one ‘right’ way and that’s it’s good to keep an open mind.

In one chapter she noticed at a friend’s house that her small daughter was making cake by herself. Whilst the age wasn’t specified, I thought it would be nice to see how Ben and Katie would get on with her suggested recipe for – Gâteau au yaourt aka yoghurt cake.

Aside from being something of an experiment with the kids, I also wanted to make it dairy free so decided to sub in coconut milk yoghurt for full-fat dairy yoghurt. I have no idea if this was the cause of things not going quite to plan:

The premise of the cake is very simple – you simply use the yoghurt pot to measure out the ingredients and mix it together!

I started out by  greasing and lining a loaf tin. A tin size hadn’t been specified in the book so I Googled pictures of the cake which came up with a few in this shape!

To begin I got Katie to tip a 250g coconut vanilla yoghurt into a large bowl before cracking in two eggs. With Katie busy mixing, Ben measured out a pot of sugar to mix in before also adding a little less than half a pot of vegetable oil.

Gateau 1

With Katie still occupied with the wet ingredients,  Ben measured pots of flour and 1.5 tsps of baking soda.

gateau 2

That got tipped into the main bowl and Daddy got drafted into mix as the mixture was a little stiff. Finally we added some dark chocolate chunks but this equally could’ve been a tub of frozen berries or perhaps even a load of lemon zest.

Filling up the tin I was aware there was quite a lot of mixture… like more than would fit in the tin. Not to be deterred I went for almost full and chucked it in the oven at 190C for 35 minutes.

IMG_9882

After the allotted time, although it had certainly risen and coloured nicely, stabbing it with a skewer revealed it was still pretty raw.

After another quick Google, I found another recipe that suggested 150C for 1 hour. Resorting to my Bake Off memories, I gave the cake a tin foil hat to stop it burning and turned the oven down to 170C for another 30 minutes!

The final result is not the prettiest cake that I’ve ever made. It has a bit of an air pocket on the top which crumbled a little and it ended up pretty lopsided.

Gateau au yaourt - made using a yoghurt pot to measure! So simple!

In the long run that doesn’t matter though because it’s really pretty scrumptious – Katie wolfed down a slice whilst it was still warm from the oven and declared it ‘princess cake!’. Definitely worth the experiment and divine with a cup of tea!

Lizzie Somerset

2 thoughts on “Food: Gâteau au yaourt”

  1. I think your cake looks pretty amazing and the photos of your daughter are beautiful!! My two would love to try this too and great to know that it is possible to make this dairy free!
    I remember reading French Kids Don’t Throw food when my daughter was about 7months old and feeling smug that my child always behaved so well in restaurants, how things have changed haha

    Thanks for linking up to #CityCountryLife lovely xx

    1. I really think it’s a great one for kids because it’s so easy for them to measure out – weighing scales are a bit tough unless you have the old fashioned balance ones!

      I read French Kids Don’t Throw Food initially when Katie was a baby and know that smug feeling all too well – now I scour it for advice as to how to fix things and just worry a lot – haha!

      Always got to love #CityCountryLife xx

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