Yoghurt Cake with Gooseberries and Red Currants

One of the prettiest baking books that I own is undoubtedly Natural Baking by German authors, Carolin Strothe and Sebastian Keitel.  The photos in the book have an other worldly, dream-like quality, and from Carolin's photo, I believe she shares my love of vintage-style dresses.

The premise of Natural Baking is that it contains "healthier recipes for guilt-free treats".  It is true that the recipes use lots of wholemeal and ancient grain flours, and contain lots of fruit; there are also healthy doses of sweeteners from muscavado sugar to maple syrup, so don't go crazy with the healthy concept.  However, baked goods are made to be enjoyed, not to be worrying about calories and sugar.  So my view is, go for it!

I happen to love cakes packed with fruit, so this book is made for me.  Some of the flours are hard to get (I had never heard of einkorn flour!), but you can substitute something else quite easily, and in some cases the author suggests a substitution that is easy to obtain.

I wanted to make the Yoghurt Cake Cake with Gooseberries and Red Currants badly because I just happened to have gooseberries (although they are of the jarred variety imported from Germany) and red currants (frozen from fresh as the ghosts of Christmas past).  Gooseberries and red currants are very hard to come by in this wide brown land, so I was pleased as punch that I had these ingredients, as well as some leftover yoghurt in the fridge that was begging to be used up.  It was providence therefore to find this recipe.

Best of all, it was absolutely delicious!!! No-one at work guessed what the fruits were - the gooseberries were not even mentioned, and people thought that the red currants might be cranberries or goji berries (so rare are red currants here).

If you want to give this lovely cake a burl, you will need:

2 eggs
125g brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
125ml mild olive oil
250g natural yoghurt
250g wholemeal spelt flour
5 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
150g gooseberries, stalks removed 
150g red currants

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius, and grease and line a 20cm springform pan.

Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla together in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment until  pale.

Add the yoghurt and olive oil to the bowl and mix until just combined.

In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt, then mix the dry ingredients in two-three batches into the wet ingredients.

Gently fold the gooseberries and red currants into the mixture using a rubber spatula.

Scrape the cake mixture into the prepared pan, and bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes or until cooked through.

Release the cake from the pan and allow it to cool on a wire rack.

Slice and serve!