The simple batter, she said, bakes up moister than a pound cake with a light springiness. "Of course, I could use a measuring cup," she said, "but it's much more fun to do it this way." Doubling as a delicious maths problem, the recipe doesn't rely on a kitchen scale, like most French bakes, but rather on volume measures facilitated by the ubiquitous 125g terracotta yoghurt pot – a tool that has frequently found its way into Crapanzano's US-bound checked luggage. That the cake is so frequently made by children may have something to do with the ratio-driven formula at its core: one part yoghurt to one part oil, two parts sugar and three parts flour plus three eggs and leavening. "They learn the yoghurt cake in maternelle (nursery school), and they have that recipe for the rest of their lives."
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"By the time I got to France, everybody I knew, knew how to make yoghurt cake already," she recalled. She penned Gateau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes with the goal of "demystifying" French home bakes, from buttery quatre-quarts (a type of pound cake) to flourless chocolate fondants to the bastion of cake simplicity: the gâteau au yaourt, a six-ingredient, one-bowl wonder that's literally child's play. "When the French bake, and particularly when the French bake at home, their desserts are less sweet than ours," explained American James Beard-winning food writer Aleksandra Crapanzano, a New York native who moved to France at the tender age of 10. But visit a French home kitchen, and you'll soon discover that these pâtisseries only tell half the story of French baked goods. Shining rows of icing-topped eclairs beckon alongside tempting glazed fruit tarts.
France is land of ornate pastries, with shops laid out more like jewellers than bakeries.
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