Yin & Yang

I love to be in the kitchen.
Okay, not all the time, but I do enjoy trying recipes out and making up my own along the way.
As a vegetarian, I eat pretty good but I will always and forever possess a sweet tooth. And it shows...

                                 

I had the urge to make a cake a couple days ago. I ended up making a lemon-blueberry cake (with lemon icing). I found a recipe online that was simple and went to work. 

The ingredients were: flour, butter, vanilla extract, baking soda, baking powder, lemon zest, 4 eggs, salt, brown sugar, granulated raw sugar (I used raw, the recipe called for regular white granulated sugar), lemon juice, greek yogurt and powdered sugar and milk for the icing.

I always want an excuse to use my vintage bundt cake pan. 

So here are the actual measurements for the cake ingredients. You could find a hundred thousand gazillion different lemon cake recipes on the internet, but I'll save you trouble and post this one because it turned out moist and flavorful. The fact that it was fairly easy to throw together was also a plus. 

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus 1 teaspoon for blueberries
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup of butter, room temperature
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar (I used raw)
4 large eggs
1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice
2-3 tablespoons grated lemon zest
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup no fat Greek Yogurt
1 1/2 – 2 cups of fresh blueberries

Sift your dry ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.

Cream the butter in a mixer until it’s light and fluffy.  Mix in the sugars, beating until it’s once again light and fluffy.

Slowly beat in the eggs and add in the vanilla extract.

Grate an entire lemon and mix in next.

Squeeze out 1/4 cup lemon juice and mix into the yogurt. This will add a lemony taste and thin out the thick Greek yogurt.

Add in 1/3 of the flour mixture and mix in completely. Follow with the yogurt, then flour, then yogurt, then ending with the rest of the flour.

Mix 1 cup of blueberries with flour then fold in gently.

Grease and flour a bundt pan and pour in the batter. Take the remaining 1/2 cup to cup of blueberries and add on to the top, slightly pushing them in. This way your get blueberries throughout the cake instead of only the bottom.

Bake at 350 degrees for 50-60 minutes until completely baked through.

Let it cool then glaze it with a basic lemon glaze. 

I used a cup of powdered sugar, 1/4 cup of lemon juice and enough milk (a little at a time) to get it to the desired consistency. 

Let the glaze set and enjoy!

(recipe courtesy of The Kitchen Magpie)

                                

After baking this delicious cake, I realized having a veggie filled asian-inspired salad for dinner would be a great idea. I like to have balance in my kitchen and in my diet.