GREEK WEEK 1: Ronery Banana Yogurt Loaf Cake

The theme of these next couple of posts is greek yogurt.

I kind of see greek yogurt as the hipster of yogurts. Saying you eat greek yogurt makes you seem kind of cool and worldly, like you have a more refined palette and probably don't even know who Nicki Minaj is, let alone listen to her crapmusic. You may have a sweet accent, too.

I had frozen bananas and didn't have the foresight to defrost them during the day, so I just microwaved them 

dayum that looks appetizing and not disgusting at all

mixing it with all the other ingredients isn't really helping, is it?

Greek yogurt is really popular among my hip(pie) Bezerklian friends and other connoisseur foodians, especially when mixed with additives like granola, strawberry and honey- tres gourmet, no? But this chick is a shameless yoplait girl for lyfe. Those 100 calorie yoplaits with ridiculous flavors like keylime pie and red velvet were made.for.me. And I ain't even sorry; those yoplaits are probably one of the only things saving my sweet sweet tooth from obesity.

And as much as I would love to be the hippest of hip, I can't stand the taste of greek yogurt. It is so bitter that whenever I try to eat it my face gets all scrunched up and my eyes disappear.  

like that

But a lot of food blogs list it as an ingredient in baked goods, which I found intriguing and a healthier substitute for butter. So I ended up buying this semi-large tub of nonfat greek yogurt from TJs and then...instantly forgot about it in the next week.

Yay, normal looking batter! Very liquid-ey

Now I desperately need to use up all this white, bitterashell gunk before it goes to waste.

Luckily, Seriouseats conveniently has a list of 41 recipes involving greek yogurt, giving me another (of the 324782934768 already) reason to believe it is the unparalleled Mecca of all food sites.

Fresh out of the oven

So for my first greek yogurt recipe, I decided to make this yogurt EVO (extra virgin olive oil) cake. Except instead of using lime zest (why do some cooking ingredients have to sound so pretentious?? Like, lime zest and cream of tar tar are probably chum buddies drinking it up at Harvard finals clubs in their boat shoes and matching pink polos. God okay, I need to stop personifying ingredients) I used one of our frozen bananas and just mashed it up instead. Banana flavored anything tastes soooooo good. 

Difficulty: 3 (didn't even require butter, which I am currently out of)
Willingness to make again: 7 -this is a great base recipe that can be tweaked in a lot of ways.
Over-all: 7

The texture of this cake was just like "nian gao" -very moist, not fluffy

Notes:
1) Instead of 1 cup I used 3/4 cup of sugar, but this time I would have been okay if the cake was sweeter. Naturally, it was a field day for the Parents. However, the cake goes great with cool whip, and I want to try pouring some of my home made chocolate sauce over it too because I bet that would taste awesome.As a general rule of thumb, I am definitely okay with slightly undersweet and subtle as opposed to overly sugarey. (sounds a little contradictory to the fact that I am a sweetconsumingmonstermachine. What can I say though, I am a complex girl)

2) Didn't have EVO (ingredient acronyms are also douchey. Strike two) but used regular PURE olive oil instead. It said online that regular olive oil just doesn't have as strong of a taste and is more bland, so it didn't add any major offenses to the cake.

3) Baked 45 instead of the suggested 50-55 minutes and it was PERFECTO. Makes me wary of the bake times that are listed on recipes online, and I think it is a good rule to bake just under 5 minutes of recipe says. No one wants all their efforts to become a burned carcinogen piece of poop.

4) I think it could have been more banana-ey. Wish I had used DOS bananas instead of one.Will remember to be generous with las frutas next time. Banana flavor weakens when the cake is refrigerated too I think. MOAR BANANAZ GUYZ.

mmmmMMMMMMmmmm with cold chocolate sauce, SO GEWD

Oh, in case you were curious, this is a ronery cake because this is my first recipe since the Cousin left me to go intern in SanFran (me = jearous). But since she is starting MIT in the fall, I'll be seeing her around for future vacations. But still, she is my favorite nom-er of foods, and now she is gone. Sadface.

Sorry I lied, one more thing! I recently received feedback from the Haashole that my posts are too long to read. Usually, anything he says to me is smack-worthy, but this time I actually concede to his point. The problem is that I type like a speed racin' baus (thanks for forcing me into all those typing classes while the other kids got to go to summer camp, Ma!), so I barely notice when text gets long. I'm also a chatterbox in person too. There's actually a funny story that I will paradoxically share with you, making my post once again, too long: when I was a widdo kid I didn't start talking until I was 5 (no one knows why), so the Mom thinks that's why I talk so much now, to make up for lost time. HA HA HA. Clevs.

                                               

midnight baking with my pops next to me, yays

Anyways, the Haashole suggested I make a TL;DR type thing for my blog, which I shall oblige: 

TL;DR: pugs are absolutely adorable, aren't they??? And I don't really like greek yogurt but need to make stuff with it.