Easy vanilla sponge

I’ve always loved baking and my 3 year old twin sons seem to enjoy dabbling in the kitchen.  We had a lovely time making this together and they seemed fascinated by the finished cake.  We planned to see family later that day so the cake had some rather deserving recipients!  I love this recipe for it’s simplicity and you won’t believe how moist it is!

Ingredients for 1 serving

2/3 cup	natural yogurt
2	medium eggs
1	egg yolk
2/3 cup	caster sugar
2 tsp	vanilla extract
1 1/3 cup	plain flour
1/3 cup	vegetable oil
20g	butter, melted
1.5 tsp	baking powder
1	lemon, zest and juice
50g	icing sugar, plus extra in case!

(Example ingredient amounts given, adjust accordingly to your requirements)

Method

• Pre-heat your oven to 190°C fan/400°F.
• Take a 1lb loaf tin grease the tin with a little oil and line with baking parchment.
• Using a 1/3 cup measure or similar sized item like a yogurt carton, measure the ingredients into a mixing bowl in this order.  Flour, baking powder, sugar, oil, yogurt.
• Then add the eggs, melted butter, vanilla extract and grate the zest of the lemon onto a saucer and add 3/4 leaving the remainder for the icing.
• Using a hand whisk, combine all of the ingredients until you have a lovely thick cake batter – this should take long.
• Carefully pour the cake batter into the loaf tin and place in the oven.
• Set the timer for 20 minutes and use a skewer to check if it’s ready.
• If the skewer comes out of the cake with batter stuck to it, add another 5 minutes. Repeat the test until the skewer comes out of the cake clean (without batter stuck to it).
• When you’re happy the sponge is cooked, remove it from the oven and place it onto a cooling rack.
• When the cake is cooled, it’s ready to ice!
• Sieve the icing into a bowl, add the remaining lemon zest and 1-2 tsp of the lemon juice.
• Mix the juice into the icing sugar.  At first it may seem a little thick, but add just another tsp of lemon juice and mix again until you have icing that you can spoon onto the cake. If you add too much juice, you’ll need to add more icing sugar to thicken up the icing.
• Drizzle the icing over the cake and leave in the fridge for 10 minutes to set the icing before serving.
• This is lovely with a cup of tea!

Notes

• This recipe can be made with greek yogurt – I always have this to hand!
• I whisk the ingredients by hand as it doesn’t take much to combine the ingredients to form the cake batter, but don’t over whisk it.  As soon as the ingredients resemble cake batter, stop whisking!
• The icing is very easy to make, but add too much liquid and you’ll need to add extra icing sugar to thicken up the icing.