Baking for Papa

We celebrated the husband’s birthday with a meal with his family on Sunday, and the pièce de résistance that night was the birthday cake that Noey baked for his Papa.

Yes, you heard that right. Noey baked the birthday cake.

I was trying to think of something that the kids could do or make for their Dad when I remembered a recipe that I had read before. It wasn’t in a cookbook. No, this was the recipe for Gâteau au Yaourt (Yoghurt Cake) that can be found in Bringing Up Bébé by Pamela Druckerman.

If you haven’t read this book, it is an American mother’s take on French Parenting and how the different attitudes of French parents as opposed to American parents lead to certain different outcomes in eating patterns, sleeping patterns and general behaviour of their children. There are a few controversial points and also interesting ones, which are not the subject of this post. Again, something which I meant to blog about but never got round to doing.

Anyway, today we’re talking about baking a cake. According to this book, baking is a weekly ritual in French families, with the children joining in practically from the time they can sit up. Gâteau au Yaourt is the first cake that French children learn to bake – and bake by themselves.  This is accomplished by in part by the fact that the ingredients in this recipe are mostly measured using empty 6oz yoghurt containers. Pretty ingenious, I think. The book claims that even 3-year olds can make this cake on their own, so I decided to put my 3-year old to the test.

Noey was very excited to get started, mainly because I told him he was going to get to crack TWO EGGS by himself. (Yes, I did hyperventilate a bit trying to get him to do it right, and Noey had to go rap the egg lengthwise instead of the normal way across the middle, but we managed to get the eggs into the bowl without any shell bits. Whew.) 

I got him to read the recipe and fetch the ingredients from the cabinets, then I sat down beside him to prompt him along, but as far as possible, I let him do everything himself.

It really wasn’t easy – for me!

Diligently scraping out  all the yoghurt from the container. I used Pauls All-Natural Yoghurt, which came in containers as close in size to 6oz as I could find. 

I photocopied the recipe from the book for him to use. On hindsight, I realised I should have re-written it in steps in point form for him, so that he could read it and follow along on his own. He got a bit lost reading it so I had to prompt him along every step of the way. 

Stirring and mixing away. I closed both eyes to the mess of flour and sugar on the table.

Everything all mixed in, ready to go into the oven! We put frozen strawberries into our cake.

While the cake was baking, I got both children to work on the Happy Birthday wording for the cake. I decided against piping wording on the cake and instead went for something much simpler. I helped the kids cut out three strips of paper with our fancy edged scissors, and got Noey to write “Happy Birthday Papa” on them, and Naomi helped to glued them as banners on toothpicks. I not a craft person so this was as good as it got, coming from me!

The simple handwritten message, ready to go on the cake. 

I was pretty anxious waiting for the cake to be done, because I had D’s family coming over for dinner and cake, and was really hoping it wouldn’t be inedible! Though I was pretty sure that they would eat anything their precious grandson and nephew made, I still didn’t want to serve bad cake! In the end, I think I over baked it a bit. I couldn’t use the knife test as instructed since I couldn’t cut the birthday cake beforehand, and it kept testing wet in the centre with toothpicks. In the end, I took it out and hoped for the best. 

The finished result, with the proud baker.

 I guess no matter how the cake turned out, DD was going to be thrilled with it. And he was. 

All cutting the cake together. Happy Birthday Papa!

It was the moment of truth, once the cake was cut and served. As I suspected, the recipe was a rather forgiving one. Noey’s measurements were hardly accurate – some containers looked fuller than others – but the cake came out quite well. It had a denser crumb but lighter flavour than regular butter cake, and was really good with tea. Of course, I’ve no idea if this was the intended result. I’m going to try making it again myself to see how it turns out.

A slice of cake. Perfect with tea, for tea.

Not the best birthday cake ever by commercial standards, but it definitely was one in Papa’s eyes. “I had the best time,” DD told me repeatedly, after that simple birthday celebration. And I suppose that’s what matters most.

Gâteau au Yaourt
(from Bringing Up Bébé)

Ingredients:

2 6-oz. containers plain whole-milk yoghurt
2 eggs
1 or 2 containers sugar (depending how sweet you want it)
1 tsp. vanilla
Just under 1 container vegetable oil
4 containers flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 or 2 containers of frozen berries or chocolate chips or other flavouring (optional)

Method:

Preheat oven to 375ºF/190ºC. Grease a 9-inch round cake pan or a loaf pan.

Gently combine the yoghurt, eggs, sugar, vanilla and oil. In a separate bowl, mix the flour and baking powder. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and mix gently until ingredients are just combined. (Don’t overmix.) Pour into the greased cake pan and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. It should be almost crispy on the outside but springy on the inside. Allow to cool on the counter before removing from the pan.

The cake is delicious served with tea and a dollop of creme fraiche.