... seek perfection?

My friends all know that I love trying new recipes and that I rarely cook or bake the same thing more than once unless I am absolutely head over heels in love with it, it takes less than 30 min to prepare from start to finish, or one of them really love it and they ask me to make it again. There are just way too many delicious concoctions out there for me to remain fixated on one thing for too long.

My friends also know that I have a soft spot for desserts, and tangy and citrusy desserts in particular. When we go out for dinner, I ineveitably gravitate towards something with lemon, meyer lemon, yuzu, lime or key lime come dessert time. I'm not sure exactly what it is but I do tend to enjoy things with a good amount of acidity in general-- Thai food, bright and refreshing white wines and the aforementioned type of desserts.

Since I started baking a year and a half ago, lemon yogurt cakes have been my number one obsession. Aside from my weakness for tangy and citrusy desserts, I am also on the constant lookout for somewhat healthy desserts that I can indulge in without feeling too guilty. Lemon yogurt cakes are the closest I've found that are both delicious and almost healthy. I also started out my baking odessey with yogurt cakes because they are apparently so easy and foolproof that French children make them all the time.

The first yogurt cake recipe I tried was Clotilde Desoulier's Gâteau au Yaourt à la Framboise (Raspberry Yogurt Cake). I liked it-- easy, moist and tasty but I didn't fall head over heels in love with it. This was back in Winter 08 and since then, I've made and tried countless other cakes, yogurt cakes, olive oil cakes, butter cakes, genoises, chiffons etc. (Incidentally, I have a serious weakness for chiffon cakes too but I think recipes that require a large number of eggs, and very different number of yolks and whites are a little too fussy for me on a day-to-day basis. I save these for times when I feel incredibly motivated to bake, which is not very often.)

Over 6 months ago, I first heard about Ina Garten's supposedly amazing Lemon Yogurt Cake from various posts on both Serious Eats and The Kitchn. Then, when I went back to Singapore over the Christmas holidays, I saw a writeup of the same recipe, with a few modifications, in The Sunday Times. "Well, it seems like I'll have to try this recipe when I return to Cambridge", I murmured to myself as I read (and subsequently cut out) the article with interest.

When I returned to Cambridge, life and work both got crazy (in good ways!) and it wasn't until one sleepness night in late March that I finally tried Ina's lemon yogurt cake recipe for the first time. The result? Yumminess-- moist, tangy and not too sweet. (I had substituted half of the AP flour with whole wheat pastry flour, used extra virgin olive oil, cut the amount of sugar, upped the amount of lemon (juice and zest), included some orange zest as well (yes, I love citrus zest!) and used my favorite Wallaby nonfat yogurt since that was what I had in the frigo and I wasn't about to go grocery shopping at 2 a.m. in the morning.)

Attempt 1: Exterior

Attempt 1: Cross-section

In short, I loved it (and so did the rest of my friends and colleagues who tried it). Ina's lemon yogurt cake was definitely the best I've tried by far, but it wasn't quite perfect yet. The soaking syrup is genius but it didn't create a crusty exterior similar to that of Tante E's Syrup Butter Cake (spiked with some rum of course!).

It was back to the drawing board. Maybe I need to up the sugar ratio in the soaking syrup? Two months later, I found myself with time to test out another version. This time around, I used limes instead of lemon (because again, this was what I had at home), 100% whole wheat pastry flour, and upped the sugar ratio in the soaking syrup. (To my scientist friends: I know you're only supposed to tweak 1 variable at a time but unfortunately, I am constrained by my impatience and what I have available at home. Besides, I'm a social scientist=P.)

Attempt 2: Exterior

Attempt 2: Cross-section

Upping the sugar ratio didn't seem to help form that crystalized layer I was hoping to achieve (Or perhaps the 100% whole wheat flour substitution affected it too-- serves me right for tweaking too many things at one go!). There was also a little too much of a nutty taste from the whole wheat and the lime gave it a slight bitterness too. Again, good but not great.

Last weekend, a friend's House Cooling Party gave me the perfect excuse to experiment yet again. This time around, I used 100% AP flour and tried upping the sugar ratio again (I also replaced an egg with flaxseed + water because I only had 2 eggs left). Midway through the baking process, I suddenly experienced a flash of inspiration though. Why don't I toast the cake after I slice it? This way, I'll achieve a lovely crisp outer exterior AND caramelized sugar is always a good thing. So I took the cake out from the oven 5 minutes earlier (I didn't want it to lose too much moisture since I was going to effectively bake it twice-- like biscotti.), sliced it into half-inch wide slices, and tried to figure out the best way to obtain that perfect crisp I was seeking.

Attempt 3: Toasting in the oven (L) vs. on a grill pan (R)

I tried toasting it in the oven at various temperatures and grilling it on my stovetop grill pan (see photo above-- I forgot to take a photo before I wolfed down half of each test slice, in the name of research no less=P). In the end, while the grill marks were pretty, obtaining a 90% uniform crisp crust on both sides from toasting it in the oven at 400 degrees (F) gave me what I was looking for-- lots of crispy parts and a hint of caramelized sugar!

Attempt 3: Toasted lemon yogurt cake, raspberry sauce, peppermint

The only minor drawback of this method is that the cake has to be freshly toasted to retain its crispness. So I quickly sliced up the rest of the cake, packed it up in foil and rushed over to my friend's party. Everyone there loved it and one of my friends who dislikes cakes in general said it's probaly the best cake she's ever had! I smell success. Was it perfect? Of course not. But it's close and other ideas are brewing in my head as I type. The search for perfection continues!