Former Great British Bake Off star Manon Lagrève has shared her recipe for the “simplest and quickest” French cake, which uses a yoghurt pot to measure out the ingredients
French chef shares ‘simplest and quickest’ cake you’ll ever make(Image: Getty)
Former Great British Bake Off star Manon Lagrève – who grew up in France – learnt the art of baking at the hands of her mother and grandmother, both sticklers for homemade goods.
Drawing from her cherished French roots, her repertoire includes a range of delightful recipes, and this yoghurt cake is as straightforward as it gets. Revealed in her cookbook “Et Voila!: A Simple French Baking Love Story”, the culinary expert describes it as “the simplest and quickest French cake she knows”.
The treat, known in its mother tongue as “gâteau au yaourt”, offers a feathery sponge ideal for combining with a burst of berry flavours for an indulgent afternoon pick-me-up, ready to devour in a mere 45 minutes. Manon commented on the cake’s adaptability, saying: “The cake is so moist and versatile, you can make it with many flavours and shapes – I use my simple Bundt tin.”
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Rather than fuss over precise measures, Manon’s clever recipe calls for the yoghurt pot itself as the unit of measurement, ensuring ratios stay consistent throughout. Simply measure out two pots worth of sugar, three pots of flour and one of oil to ensure they match the quantity of the yoghurt used in the cake.
Manon’s French yoghurt cake recipe
Collect your ingredients alongside a large mixing bowl and either a Bundt or standard-sized loaf tin depending on your preference. Begin by greasing your chosen tin with a smear of butter or a swift spritz of cooking spray, followed by a modest sprinkle of flour for good measure, reports the Express.
Into your mixing bowl goes one empty pot of yoghurt; next, refill the pot twice over with sugar, adding each to the bowl. Employ a whisk to blend until a rich cream forms, at which point the eggs are introduced.
Whisk the eggs into the batter to make it smoother, then add the vanilla extract, pour in the oil and stir again. Next, it’s time to fold in the dry ingredients such as flour, salt, and baking powder.
Taste the batter to ensure it’s perfect and tweak the vanilla if needed before pouring it into your lined baking tin. To keep your blueberries or raspberries from sinking to the bottom, coat them in a bit of flour, scatter them over the batter and gently press them down.
The cake needs to cook for 35 minutes at 180C, after which you should let it cool for a bit. When it has cooled, turn it out onto a lovely cake stand fruit-side up, dust with icing sugar, and garnish with rosemary. Manon exclaimed: “Et voila. This is the quickest French cake in your repertoire!”