TWD: Layered and Round French Yogurt Cake!

This week’s TWD was chosen by Liliana of My Cookbook Addiction: french yogurt cake with marmalade glaze! The french yogurt cake is a variation on a basic pound cake and is apparently very popular with home cooks in France (who typically never bake because there are so many wonderful patisseries close by). I was definitely excited about this week’s recipe. We’ve had quite a few heavy recipes lately and I was looking forward to something a bit lighter.

For many of the recipes in her cookbook, Dorie provides suggestions for “playing around” – ideas to modify the recipe to accommodate different flavors or ingredients. I’m generally pretty boring and stick with the basic recipe but this week I decided to live on the edge a bit and mix things up 🙂 I really liked her idea to turn the basic loaf cake into a layered and round cake. I used orange zest in place of lemon and skipped the ground almonds as well as the lemon marmalade (I couldn’t find any!). I decided to add some strawberry preserves between the layers and I filled and frosted with Dorie’s whipped cream.

I really enjoyed this cake! The orange zest gives the cake a wonderful citrus flavor. The cake is moist and has a dense crumb, but it’s not heavy. I thought the orange flavor worked well with the strawberry preserves and the whipped cream so I was glad I went that route. I plan to make this again using lemon zest and lemon marmalade as soon as I find some – it was that good!

Thanks to Liliana for this week’s selection! She’ll post the recipe on her blog if you’re interested (alternatively, you could purchase the book so you can try all of Dorie’s recipes!). If you want to see all of this week’s variations on the french yogurt cake, head over to the TWD blogroll!