A while back, I tweeted about making a grapefruit yogurt cake, and got responses ranging from “sounds weird” to “that’s disgusting.” Since I’m easily influenced by others, I held off on making it until last night, when I realized that I still had both grapefruit and yogurt that needed to be used, SOON. Grapefruit is certainly the underdog of the citrus world, and I think that even when people do get around to eating it, they’re certainly not eating it in cake. Poor grapefruit, so misunderstood.
This cake is actually a variation on a cake I’ve made several times; after making this one, my husband and I decided that we like it best with Meyer lemon and a quarter semolina flour subbed in for all-purpose. But I think I’d be happy eating some version or other of this cake for dessert from now until eternity, especially when it gets warm and I’m making homemade ice cream again; this would be fantastic with Lyon Farms blackberry ice cream. Next I think I’ll try Cara Cara oranges, and maybe cook down some of the juice into a syrup to add to the cake batter (thanks to Shuna Fish Lydon for that tip, in the comments of the original recipe.)
I used King Arthur Flour’s white whole wheat flour for this cake; it’s not cheap, but this is how I justify my excessive baking as of late. There’s no noticeable taste or texture difference from white flour, and this way I can feel a teeny tiny bit healthier. I also noticed that the flour is much, much cheaper if you buy it on King Arthur’s website; I paid over $8.00 for it at Whole Foods, but it’s only $4.50 online.
I’m not really sure what it means to be the “good news yogurt”, but I’ve been using Erivan for baking for a while now. I’m not really a fan of the yogurt by itself, since it has a very odd texture. See?
Maybe because it’s not homogenized? It’s also the tangiest, sourest yogurt I’ve ever tasted, which may be why it works so well in a citrus cake. I didn’t have quite enough for the cake so I supplemented with my favorite yogurt for eating:
This yogurt is the best: plain, with cereal, over fruit, in a smoothie. One thing I’ve learned about yogurt and dairy products in general is that their quality seems to be directly correlated with how religious their producers are. If there’s a bible quote somewhere on the packaging or the website, you know it’s good. (Bread is a whole other story though.)
…and that’s as far as I got with the picture-taking. In case you couldn’t tell from these photos, the lighting in our kitchen is incredibly bad. And by the time we got around to eating the cake, we were thinking about eating cake, and not taking photos.
In conclusion: do not fear the grapefruit.