Benedictine Yogurt Cake

I rarely crave sweets, and I almost never eat dessert - I'd rather  let the savory flavors of a good meal linger. But recently I found myself unable to get the thought of the French yogurt cake at one of my favorite blogs, Citron et Vanille, out of my head. Perhaps it's the gloomy weather, or the fact that the ever-shorter days depress me ... there really is something undeniably comforting about the smell of a baking cake. I suppose the fact that it's not overly sweet attracted me, but I was also drawn to its simplicity, as I have next to no experience making cakes.

As the shadows got longer, my urge to make this cake grew stronger. There were just a couple of  things standing between me and a yogurt cake: I only had two eggs left, rather than the three the recipe calls for, and I only had a loaf pan, not a round cake pan. I told you I never bake sweets!

So I decided I would MacGyver this thing one way or the other. I hunted around for other yogurt cake recipes to make sure I could pull this off with just two eggs, and, reassured, I set out to bake a cake. Now just about every traditional yogurt cakes calls for a tablespoon of rum or cognac; lacking these essential spirits I decided to try Benedictine, a French herbal liqueur, which gave my cake a subtle, pleasant  hint of honey and oranges.

The top and middle of my cake came out beautifully - moist, not too sweet, with a light crumb. The bottom on the other hand ... clearly there were some problems here. It actually didn't taste burnt, but it didn't taste exactly right either, and I ended up cutting the bottom off to eat it. I later discovered that my (new!) oven has sporadically decided to cook  25-50 degrees too hot, so I think that was the problem.  (For some reason I've had no problem with bread.)  Or perhaps the loaf pan was the wrong vessel after all. If anyone has any suggestions after reading the recipe - feel free to chime in!

Benedictine Yogurt Cake
1 cup plain Greek yogurt
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1/2 cup oil
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp Benedictine
1 tsp vanilla extract

Beat the eggs and the sugar together. Add yogurt, flour, oil, baking powder, Benedictine, and vanilla extract. Stir to mix everything together but don't overwork the batter. Pour into a greased loaf pan (or cake pan!) and bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes, until the top is golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Let sit  for 5 -10 minutes and remove to a rack to cool completely.