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I have another Voskos Greek Yogurt recipe to share. It’s for a simple pound cake that can be made without an electric mixer!
Using vegetable oil in place of butter lets you skip the creaming, and adding lemon, vanilla and spices ensures there’s plenty of flavor. The texture is dense but very tender (thanks to the yogurt), and the cake has a nicely rounded top — just be sure you use the right size loaf pan. If you use a larger one, the top might be flatter and the cake will be shorter.
Hmm, I really don’t have anything else to say about this one other than that it was really good and I was surprised that a no-butter pound cake would even work. However, it did. I can’t wait it to serve it with some fruit and whipped cream.
Greek Yogurt Pound Cake
A simple lemon pound cake made with Greek yogurt
Servings: 8
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups 6.8 ounces all-purpose flour
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup lightly packed brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg optional
- 1/2 cup Voskos Greek Yogurt original, room temperature
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 2 packed teaspoons lemon zest
- 1 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 3/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
Icing
- 2 teaspoons melted butter
- 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
- 1/2 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon milk
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour an 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 inch metal loaf pan or line inside with nonstick foil.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, both sugars, salt, baking soda, ginger and nutmeg. Stir thoroughly.
- Make a deep well in the center of the flour mixture and add the yogurt, oil, lemon zest, lemon juice, vanilla and eggs.
- With a large mixing spoon (I like using a heavy duty silicone scraper), mix the liquid ingredients together in the well, then mix the dry ingredients into the liquid and continue stirring until blended. Do not over-beat.
- Transfer the batter to the pan and bake on center rack for about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Let cool completely in the pan.
- When cool, prepare icing by mixing all icing ingredients together until smooth. Drizzle over cake and let set.
Notes
For the oil, I used canola.
I didn’t know the original pound cakes didn’t contain any leavening at all! Wow, they must have been dense!
Sure! Olive oil would be fine. If you use extra virgin, you’ll have an olive oil flavored cake, so I suggest using a really light tasting olive oil.
Do you think olive oil would work?
Mary, the original versions were rich, dense cakes that called for a pound of butter, a pound of sugar, a pound of flour and a pound of eggs. They also didn’t contain leavening. But recipes evolve, and now there are all kind of ways to make pound cakes. Versions that are closer to the original “pound” recipe would typically fill two loaf pans or one tube pan. I rarely make a full tube pan so I always halve recipes or develop recipes as a loaf. That being said, you could still call this a loaf pan.
This may sound like a silly question, but what makes a pound cake a pound cake versus a loaf cake? (Since so few modern recipes have the ubiquitous pound of butter, sugar, and so forth in them…)
I love Greek yogurt in all forms, so this is right up my alley. I always have it on hand.
Looks good! That’s good for you to like it without the butter taste.