Have you ever made a yogurt cake? It’s divine! The yogurt works like buttermilk or sour cream to add a rich but subtle tang to this cake. Since yogurt is acidic it also helps the cake rise when it reacts with the baking powder.

We love yogurt for breakfast and snacks so I make a gallon of it every month to keep up with the voracious appetites of my people. This helps save money and cuts down on waste because I’m not throwing out a pile of plastic containers all the time.

The downside is that if your fridge dies you are left with more jars of yogurt than your kids can go through so you make yogurt cake. Four of them to be precise! No one was complaining about it though.

A fun thing about this recipe is that you can use lemon, lime, orange, or grapefruit to flavor the cake. I used the last lime in the fridge for this particular cake, the zest went in the batter and the juice in the glaze. Basically it’s a pound cake or lemon drizzle cake which is always a hit over here.

Yogurt Cake Recipe

  • 1 cup plain yogurt
  • 2 eggs
  • Zest from one lemon, lime, orange, or grapefruit
  • 1/2 cup oil (I used light olive oil)
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 1/2 cup flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

Glaze

  • 1/4 cup juice from lemon, lime, orange, or grapefruit
  • 1/2 cup powdered sugar

Whisk the yogurt, eggs, zest, and oil together in a large bowl. Stir in sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt, stir to blend. Pour into a buttered standard loaf pan. Bake in a preheated 350° oven for 50 minutes or until it tests done.

You can test a cake by poking the center with a toothpick or thin knife and checking if there are any crumbs on it. There should not be any crumbs or batter on the cake. If there are, bake the cake for 10 more minutes and test again. I test mine with a meat thermometer. A fully baked cake will read 200°.

While the cake is baking, mix the glaze by stirring together the juice and powdered sugar. It should be thick enough to coat the spoon but still be pourable. When your cake is done, place it on a cooling rack and pour on the glaze. Ideally it should glaze the entire cake and soak in a bit. Cool the cake completely in the pan if you can wait that long to slice it!

Tips and Tricks

  • I line the pan with parchment to make it easier to remove the cake from the pan after it’s cooled.
  • You can double this recipe and make two loaf cakes or bake it in a bundt pan.
  • Use a microplane or fine grater to grate the zest of the fruit.
  • Only grate off the colored layer of zest, the white pith underneath is bitter so stop as soon as you get through the colored layer.
  • I use plain yogurt but you could experiment with flavored yogurt if you’d like. It will make the cake sweeter so you may want to reduce the sugar in the batter by a tablespoon or so.