Raspberry yogurt cake with orange glaze

Jon and I aren't big dessert people. The main exceptions are ice cream for Jon and dark chocolate for me. But neither one of us is much of a baker. However, I've been seeing a lot of really nice-looking dessert recipes recently, so I think we might be indulging a little more this summer. This is the first dessert I've made in a while. I got the recipe from the July 2008 issue of Bon Appetit, and we both thought it looked good. Raspberries are my favorite berry, and I make yogurt all the time, so it was a logical choice. The only thing I didn't have was a Bundt pan, so I made it in my heart-shaped cake pans because we love each other. (And because those are the only cake pans we have.) We decided to make it into two small cakes rather than one two-layer cake. We are having friends over for dinner tomorrow, and the layer we haven't cut into yet will be perfect for them.

I don't know if I will make this cake again. It is very good, but it is very sweet. I know that it's a cake, but it was a little too much for me. The glaze is also quite sweet. Next time I will use lemon juice instead of orange juice in the glaze. (The original recipe just called for water. I used orange juice because there was orange juice in the cake batter, so it seemed to make sense.) I ended up squeezing a little lemon juice onto mine, and it really helped cut the sweetness.

The texture was also more muffin-y than cakey. I like muffins, but I was after cake. It was a lot denser and moister than most cakes. I might use this as a really indulgent muffin recipe. If I do use it again, I will cut the sugar dramatically. Since it was a cake recipe, I didn't want to mess with the chemistry before trying it once. I think of cakes as being very fussy about the wet/dry/fat/whatever ratios. But muffins are more forgiving, and I think I could decrease the sugar to 1 cup and be fine. It sounds like I didn't really like it, but that's not true. It tasted really good, and the raspberry-almond combination was superb. I would just change a couple things in the future. But I am publishing the recipe as I made it because you might like it that way.

Close-up so you can see the texture

Raspberry yogurt cake with orange glaze
This is my version of the recipe. The original can be found here.

3 cups flour, divided (2 1/2 cups and 1/2 cup)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 tbsp orange juice, divided (2 tbsp and 2 tbsp)
1 1/2 tsp almond extract, divided (1 tsp and 1/2 tsp)
1 tsp finely grated orange zest
3 eggs, room temperature
1 cup plain yogurt
2 1/2 cups frozen raspberries (most of a 1-pound bag), or fresh if you're super-rich
1 cup powdered sugar
Lemon wedges, optional

Butter and flour two small cake pans. Preheat oven to 350° F.

Mix 2 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar by hand or with an electric mixer until creamy. Add 2 tbsp orange juice, 1 tsp almond extract, and orange zest and beat together. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add yogurt and mix together. Pour in the dry ingredients and beat just until blended. Combine raspberries and 1/2 cup flour in the medium bowl you just poured the flour out of. Toss until raspberries are coated in flour. Fold into batter. Pour into prepared cake pans and bake for 40 minutes or until a knife or toothpick comes out clean. Let it cool for 30 minutes if you can stand it.
While the cake is in the oven, make the glaze. Combine powdered sugar, 2 tbsp orange juice, and 1/2 tsp almond extract and whisk together with a fork (or whisk) until a thick glaze forms. Add more juice if you need or want to.
To serve, cut a slice of cake, pour some glaze on, and squeeze a little bit of lemon juice over it if it's too sweet for you.