The Flexitarian Cook

“I raised to my lips a spoonful of the cake . . . a shudder ran through my whole body and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place.”
Marcel Proust

As a child, I used to vacation with my father’s first cousin Nina, at her house in the small village of Champagné St-Hilaire, near the city of Poitiers (France). I would spend the month of July there, busy riding my bike and listening to music with the girl who lived across the street and who was a couple of years older than me. I also looked forward to visits from Nina’s friend Paulette and her British husband, with whom I was eager to practice the smattering of English I possessed then. He was very careful not to hurt my feelings when I asked him how good my accent was, although in retrospect, I know I must have sounded like a girly version of Jacques Cousteau.

Nina, who had remained single and childless, took very good care of me. The food at her house was simple but wonderful, mostly because the ingredients came straight from her garden, but also because she came from a long line of cooks and bakers and had picked up a few things from them. Her parents, Berthe and Georges, had owned a neighborhood restaurant and café on the Rue Riquet in the 18th arrondissement of Paris through the early 70′s. George’s mother had owned a bakery in Champagné (next door to what was to be Nina’s house), and she passed along many of her recipes to Nina, who faithfully transcribed them in notebooks; I remember reading from those notebooks as a child, looking for my favorite recipes and re-writing them on loose leaf so I could take them home with me. Somehow, they never quite came out the same. I think what she made simply tasted of vacation and long summer days in the country; hard to reproduce on a school night in the suburbs of Paris. And yet…

One of my favorites was her yogurt cake. This simple cake is one for which every French family has a recipe, and which every French school child has made at least once. She taught me how to make it; inevitably, it was the cake I requested when she asked me what I wanted for dessert (and there was always dessert at her house). I make it often still, and think of her each time. She is now 90 and in poor health, and her memory has largely faded, and so I remember some things in her stead. I don’t shudder like Proust at the remembrance, but it does make me smile.

Her (grandmother’s) recipe calls for containers of yogurt as a measure for the rest of the ingredients. In France, yogurt (plain or flavored) is typically sold in single-serve containers, which explains this preference. I am giving you the recipe with more common kitchen measures here, and a few adjustments I have made over the years; however, those of you intrepid francophiles can try Nina’s recipe, which I am including here:

The original

Le Gâteau au Yaourt

3/4 cup plain, unsweetened yogurt (whole milk is better)
2 cups cake flour (or 1 1/2 cup all-purpose + 1/2 cup corn starch)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp amaretto, or rhum, or Grand-Marnier (optional)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

Beat together eggs and sugar; add yogurt, oil and flavorings. Mix together flour, baking soda and baking powder and add to the wet mixture. Incorporate gently. Do not over mix.

The batter may look a little lumpy; that's okay.

Pour into an 8 or 9″ round cake pan. Bake at 350 for 30 min or so, until the toothpick inserted in the center of the cake come out clean. Cool 10 min in the pan, then on a wire rack.

Just out of the oven

Ready for a fork, or better yet, fingers

Tags: cake, yogurt

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