With a muted sweetness balanced by the yoghurt’s welcome tang, “it’s just enough to make it a dessert, but not so much that it feels like it needs to be a special occasion.”
Indeed, birthdays and Sunday lunches in France are more often concluded with the wares of pro pâtissiers, architectural marvels of ganache, syrup and sponge sourced with care by the host. Homemade French cakes, on the contrary, are a testament to simplicity, devoid not just of icing (Crapanzano said she’s never seen a French person ice a cake at home, “except maybe at Christmas”) but also both salt and vanilla, which Crapanzano notes the French often eschew unless using them in starring roles, as in desserts like crème brûlée.
That isn’t to say a home baker couldn’t add one or both to the gâteau au yaourt; after all, the cake’s very simplicity renders it a “blueprint”, according to Crapanzano, a canvas upon which to play.
A dozen different gâteaux au yaourt dot the pages of her book: infused with pears and Poire Williams (a pear-flavoured brandy); with peach and verbena. In one recipe, almond flour lends more structure; in another, fruity olive oil dances with lemon and thyme. Home bakers, she says, can easily add their own spin, provided they stick with a base of whole milk yoghurt (Crapanzano prefers Fage, though dairy-free bakers could also begin with the oat yoghurt version developed by Apollonia Poilane, Crapanzano’s childhood neighbour.)
With enough tinkering, gâteau au yaourt can even rise through the ranks to special occasion status, as with Crapanzano’s “dinner party” recipe infused with orange, doused in a Grand Marnier syrup, and finished with a marmalade-rum glaze.
Be it in this more fanciful form or the six-ingredient baseline recipe (unsurprisingly the book’s first), yoghurt cake is above all a testament to French home baking’s everyday appeal: the cake of choice for the 16:00 goûter (after-school snack), for unexpected guests who drop by for coffee, or for a no-fuss midweek dessert.
“When you’re not trying to make something really rich and really sweet,” mused Crapanzano, “it becomes just a part of life.”
And moreover, it’s almost always within your reach. “It needs nothing but a bowl and a whisk,” said Crapanzano. “And a jar of yoghurt.”