I made my first Ina Garten recipe, and now I'm sad.

I am a huge fan of Ina Garten, but until last week I'd never made one of her recipes. I don't have any of her books, and the recipes she has either don't appeal to me, sound too rich, or make too much food (like the baked ham for 35).

So I admire her from afar and covet her kitchen and garden and little convertible.

But then last month I stumbled across a blog called
No Lemon Juice and her post about Ina's lemon yogurt cake. Her pictures looked so gorgeous that I made it last weekend when we were still at my parents house. That way there would be more help in eating it.

My very favorite lemon bread recipe is my mom's but this one sounded pretty wonderful too, especially with the yogurt.

So I whipped up the batter and tossed it in the oven, and after the noted cooking time I checked it and it was still raw in the middle. I gave it a few more minutes, checked again. And again. And again. In the end we gave it almost 20 extra minutes. And then when I removed it from the pan (after the cooling period) it sank a bit.


There was also a sort of "band" of batter near the bottom of the loaf that looked uncooked.

It tasted ok, although the tang of the yogurt wasn't present in the cooked loaf like it was in the batter. (Yep, I licked the bowl!) It went fast - I made it Saturday afternoon and it was gone by Tuesday, so it couldn't have been so bad, eh?

Recipe: Lemon Yogurt Cake