mango on an apple

I spaced out and booked us so that we ate out all day on Sunday – even though I had planned and bought some lamb, chard, and potatoes for a nice treat for dinner. Instead, we had a lovely brunch at Morning Glory and a birthday dinner with my sister at Rivoli.

So, I’m going to distract you with sunshine and lemons.

This is a slightly dense and totally moist and flavourful lemon cake that goes well with breakfast, or is delightful as an afternoon snack. I love making it whenever I have plain yogurt on hand (which isn’t very often), and the bright citrus taste always brings a little sunshine to my day. It was with this thought in mind that I picked up some lemons on Saturday when we ventured out in the -19 weather to get groceries. In the middle of this bleak and freezing day, a slice of this cake with a warm cup of tea in the afternoon is perfect.

The recipe is from the Barefoot Contessa at Home cookbook that I received a few years ago when I first started building my kitchen. The book is great for basic recipes, and there are quite a few staples in here that I tend to revisit quite a bit. I have also since read that yogurt cake is a very typical French snack, and from there have made my own adjustments to all the recipes for yogurt cake I’ve come across, to get to the one below.

Ingredients

• 250g plain yogurt (non-fat doesn’t work as well as the thick whole-fat good stuff)
• 200g (1 cup) sugar
• 3 large eggs
• zest of 2 lemons
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 250g (1 1/4 cups) flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 100g (1/2 cup) vegetable oil (i.e. canola)

• juice from the 2 lemons
• 65g (1/3 cup) sugar

  

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter, flour, and line a loaf pan with parchment
2. Whisk together flour, salt, and baking powder in a small bowl and set aside
3. Whisk together yogurt, sugar, eggs, lemon zest, and vanilla in a large bowl until thoroughly mixed, but don’t over-beat
4. Fold in the flour until well incorporated. Drizzle in the oil and stir everything together until the oil is completely integrated in the mixture
5. Pour into pan and bake for 45 – 55 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. The top always cracks for me. If you have any tricks/patience to try different temperatures or techniques, please feel free to share in the comments!
6. Let cool in pan for about 5 minutes on a rack before removing from the pan
7. Put the cake in a plate or on the rack but with a plate underneath. Heat up the lemon juice and sugar until sugar is melted and the mixture is warm, and drizzle slowly all over the cake
8. Let the cake sit in the lemon juice for 5 – 10 minutes before removing from any remaining liquid and cooling on a rack

Glaze (optional)

• 1/2 cup – 1 cup (80g – 160g) icing sugar
• 2 tbsp lemon juice or water – from your remaining lemon juice would be ideal

Mix together the icing sugar and lemon juice until it’s a thick syrup consistency, and drizzle over the cake. Let the icing cool and harden before slicing.

Hope you’re all keeping warm and cozy and doing the Summer dance with me!

We’re really bad at sticking to budgets. Sorry, Alex requested that I clarify: I am really bad at sticking to budgets.

It’s not that I can’t stay within my limits, it’s that I have a very laissez-faire attitude about buying what I want, if I can afford it. I’ll responsibly pay off my credit cards every month, make sure to put something in my savings account when I can, blah blah blah. But if I budgeted for $100 spending money when traveling, and came across something irresistible for $150, I’ll gladly buy it and nip a little from groceries or money that could potentially be saved (oops) later. It all works out in the end. At least, so far it has.

A couple of things to throw out there – when we got engaged, we knew we wanted to be 100% responsible for all the costs of the wedding. Since we graduated from university, we’ve been completely on our own, and by the time engagement rolled around, we had gotten our car and condo without any help from our parents. In that sense, it almost felt “not right” to ask for help on a smaller ticket item. Also, we knew we didn’t want to pay a lot of money for our wedding. To us, the more exciting things to spend money on were things like our condo, or traveling, or higher education. Marriage was, and still is, a formality that is nice to have, but all things considered, definitely not a priority on my mind.

Anyway, so with that in mind, we’ve decided to spend as little money as possible. We’ve made a budget that is lower than the average cost in 2010. I’m as committed to it as I can be (see above for my track record). To manage it so far, we’ve done a few drastic things: our guest list is super small (but we promise to take good care of them!), we’re getting married on a weekday, and I’m having my dress made, even though I loved the “real thing” in the couture gown store.

To live up to my reputation, there have also been instances where I couldn’t resist splurging. I am determined on having letterpress invitations (it’s a lost art!), and I had such a wonderful conversation with our florist the first time we chatted that I doubled my budget to suit her quote. In return, I’ve cut down on our stationery needs and will be printing minimal numbers with letterpress, and hand stamping and embossing the rest of them.

As we plan out a bit more, we’ll get closer to seeing if we can stick close to our goal. It’s definitely been an interesting experience getting ourselves into the “give-and-take” mindset, and I hope I can continue to post ideas where we found ways to “give” but still stay creative. Stay tuned!