Turkish Lime Yoghurt Cake
By Lee Jackson ↣ Published on: March 19, 2009
This delicious Turkish yoghurt cake has the softest, lightest texture – almost a souffle. With only five ingredients it’s a simple and delicious combination of zingy flavours, quite unlike any other cake you’ll ever experience!
Typically, I don't bake - maybe once or twice a year. It's not that I don't like sweet stuff, but I rarely make the effort as I don't really crave sweet things as much as I do savoury. Once in a while though I have a 'moment' where I MUST make one of my favourite sweet things... like this cake from Turkey.
I first sampled this one in Istanbul after a day of sightseeing and eating - managing to squeeze in ONE final treat. What a Turkish delight! A zingy, citrus extravaganza. Mid-way between a cake, a flan and a baked soufflé, and quite unlike anything I'd eaten before.
Why it works?
It's quick, easy and fuss free - this really is a simple cake to put together. It's not the prettiest of cakes and it can be quite distressing to see it sink in size from how it comes out of the oven, but the taste! Zingy and sharp from the lime with the softest texture. Yum.
To make this cake even more special, this yoghurt cake only has 5 ingredients! Each working remarkably hard to creating the most incredible citrus flavour and soft, light texture. The cake I ate in Istanbul was made with lemons, but I gotta say - for me, limes are where it's at! You can use either.
This yoghurt cake is so simple - but don't let that fool you into thinking there's not a lot of flavour going on. Baking with yoghurt creates a wonderful lightly sour note to the cake while keeping it extra-moist. This cake so wonderful on its own, but served with a dollop of cream mixed with a little powdered sugar and a tsp (or less) of rosewater, it's sheer perfection.
Ready to get cooking?
If you like citrus then this cake has all that delicious freshness from the lime and the light sourness from the yoghurt. It's not a dry cake, more like a flan or cheesecake but that's why I love it! Give this recipe a try and you'll see why it's prtty much the only sweet treat I crave! Enjoy the recipe.
More dessert recipes
If you liked this cake, try one of my tiny selection of sweet treat recipes! I told you I don't make many desserts!
This recipe uses affiliations and may receive a commission based on your activity (link clicks). Learn more.
Video Recipe
Ingredients
- 4 eggs
- ⅔ cups sugar
- 3 tbsp flour (plain/all purpose)
- 14 oz yoghurt plain (Greek Style)
- 1 ½ limes
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF
- Zest the limes and squeeze out the juices from 1 1/2 of them and set aside. Separate the eggs then beat the yolks with the sugar until light and creamy. Beat in the flour, then the yoghurt, lime zest and juice. Beat until well mixed.
- Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the whites using a metal spoon in a figure of 8 motion into the mixture until combined. Don't over mix as you'll lose the lightness.
- Grease a 20-25cm springform baking tin with a little butter then dust with flour, tipping out any excess.Pour in the cake mixture and bake in the oven for 50-60 minutes until brown. The cake will rise magnificently, but then fall back into place when cooling, don't worry yourself, this is supposed to happen. That's it! Let it cool, slightly and remove from the tin to cool completely on a wire rack.
- I served mine with a little cream which I'd infused with some rose water that had been sat in my fridge for over 100 years completely unused. It never goes off, apparently.
Start with this one… I’m making it again for a dinner party this evening. Yum…
This looks lovely. You have so many excellent recipes on your site. I don’t know which on to start with. I wanna make em all!