I love cooking. I love the whole process. I love the actual cooking, the cleaning, the knowledge that the delicious meal I’m enjoying was made by me and knowing what exactly is in my food because I picked every ingredient that went in it. I’m very picky about my ingredients. I like to cook organic when possible but that’s not the most important thing for me. For me it’s that I hate preservatives. So by cooking from scratch I feel I reduce the amount of preservatives I eat.
Now, I’m under no delusions that I am completely preservative free if I cook, but I do think it’s greatly minimized. I avoid buying products that have a long ingredients list of things I cannot read. Or things I can read that I know are bad.
Like high fructose corn syrup. You will not find a single product in my house that contains high fructose corn syrup. I drive all the way to Fresh Market to buy my ketchup because it contains all natural ingredients and is a short list. The shorter the ingredients list, the better.
A while back my friend and I were talking about our healthy options for breakfast and it turns out we both eat oatmeal. She eats the instant from a bag, I eat steel cut oats which I have to boil for 5 whole minutes in a pot. I was curious so I checked the ingredients list of her “healthy” instant oatmeal. It was outrageously long and most of the words I couldn’t even read! When I got home I checked the my oatmeal… One ingredient: 100% Whole Grain Irish Oats. Perfect.
But often the organic or name brand is more expensive than the store brand so it’s difficult to justify the pricier brand. One good way for me to decide if it’s worth it or not is the ingredients list.
About two years ago it occurred to me to compare the Publix brand sour cream that I had been buying for years to Daisy sour cream which is a bit more expensive. The Publix brand has nine ingredients to Daisy’s one. Guess who made the switch to Daisy that day?
As much as I check the ingredients list you’d think I’d be the sort of person who checks the nutritional label too. I do skim it but I don’t give it as much importance. I am an overall healthy eater by the choices I naturally make that lead me towards healthier options: plenty of fruits and vegetables, lean meats, whole grains, minimum fried foods, etc.
I try to cook healthy in that I use fresh ingredients, lots of herbs for taste & extra virgin olive oil but I don’t necessarily cook low fat or low carb (or low sodium for that matter). I’d like to say that most of my carbs come from complex carbs but I do have to admit I love my pasta and bread. That’s probably the most processed food I have in the house. What can I say? I should have lived in Italy.
I don’t generally have to modify recipes because I either just make something up or choose a recipe that’s more or less on the healthy side, but I suppose that’s all relative because my mom would say I don’t cook all that healthy. She cooks very very light. But, when I do follow a recipe and can substitute with an ingredient that’s healthier or fresher, I go for it.
Butter is something I don’t use much in my house. I usually keep it in the freezer and a box of four sticks of butter can last me six months or more. So by my lack of use of butter you can deduce that I don’t do much baking, which makes it confusing why the title of this post is about a cake.
Well, it’s true I don’t do much baking but every now and then I get a wild hair. Over the holidays I was with my parents at their mountain house in Big Canoe and my mom had a bunch of Meyer lemons from her friend Kandie’s tree. We were using them as much as we could but there were so many, we didn’t want them to go to waste. So I looked up the recipe for a lemon loaf cake and got to baking. I made a couple of modifications and it was delicious. My parents, who are not big sweet eaters like myself, and I gobbled it up.
So today I made another lemon loaf cake modifying from the original recipe even further. It was even better than the first time and my neighbor who went back for seconds confirmed it was delicious.
You might think my comment above about butter means I subbed something out for the butter, but I did not. Not this time. Instead, I used low fat Greek yogurt instead of sour cream, and made a couple other changes. Next time I’m going to experiment further with the recipe by using applesauce for butter AND the Greek yogurt. But for this time, butter was all I had so I used it. So now the box of butter in my freezer is down to three sticks and will probably remain that way for a while!
One thing I hate is when I get started on a recipe and half way through realize I was supposed to be using an ingredient at room temperature or let something sit for hours before eating. Why don’t recipes say these things at the beginning for impatient cooks like me?! So I’m letting you know now: the eggs and butter should be room temperature. Also, you’ll want to let the glaze set for about 20 minutes before eating. So plan ahead accordingly.
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter
- 1/2 cup brown sugar (you can use white if you prefer)
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup of low fat or non fat plain Greek yogurt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon peel (equals to about the peel of an entire lemon)
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/4 cup (or a little less) cornstarch
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 6 tablespoons of fresh squeezed lemon juice
- 1 cup confectioner’s sugar
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit
- Beat the room temperature butter and brown sugar (I had to use white sugar this time as I was out of brown. Tragedy!) with an electric mixer in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Do not melt the butter prior. Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, allowing each egg to blend into the butter mixture before adding the next. Beat in the Greek yogurt, vanilla, and lemon peel for about 2 minutes or so. The batter will look slightly curdled but that’s fine. Don’t forget to thoroughly wash the lemon before grating it.
- Add flour, cornstarch (if you don’t have cornstarch that’s fine, just add an extra tablespoon of flour), salt, and baking soda into the egg mixture, mixing until just incorporated. Don’t over beat. Batter should be extremely thick. Pour the batter into a prepared 8×4 inch loaf pan.
- Bake in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 30-35 minutes.
- While the cake is baking, whisk together the lemon juice and powdered sugar in a medium bowl for the glaze.
- Remove cake from oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes in the pan before removing it a plate. Pour glaze over entire cake and allow cake to cool while the glaze is soaked in, 20 minutes at least if you can keep yourself from diving right in!
Original recipe credit to http://allrecipes.com/recipe/lemon-loaf-cake/