Chocolate Yogurt Cake

Mmmm chocolatey goodness. I have yet to force this on my poor test subjects, but its coming. Oh, its coming. This is also the first cake after deciding to blog about it, so there is suddenly a whole whack of photos.

Chocolate Yogurt Cake:

1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup plain yogurt
3/4 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3 tbsp cocoa (be generous)
2 tsps baking powder
spices to taste (chili, cinnamon, cardamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves...)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
chocolate to taste, melted (I used 225g)
a handful of toasted cacao nibs

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Butter whatever sort of pan or tin you want to use (like a 9-inch round cake pan which I've never used). In a large bowl, whisk together vanilla, yogurt and sugar, then whisk in eggs. Add flour, and baking powder, mixing just until fully incorporated. Add the oil and mix thoroughly, then the chocolate, and then the cacao nibs. Pour into pan. Bake at 350ºF for 30-35 minutes or until lightly golden and toothpick comes out clean. (For mini muffin tins I find 10 minutes does the trick, for regular muffins 20 minutes and for jumbo muffins or mini loaves about 25 minutes, while a whole loaf pan requires more like... 50? I'm not sure, I just keep giving it another five or ten minutes until its done.)

For me the chili is really important here. I like my chocolate spicey. Next time I might use more chocolate, maybe twice as much. They're plenty chocolatey as is, but I want to push the limits. At first I only used one tablespoon of cocoa (silly me) and on tasting it later I added more. And more chili too. I was actually fairly conservative with the spices since I'm not baking just for myself, but if the guinea pigs like it then next time I'll go all out.

After adding the oil:
Adding the chocolate: Cacao nibs: In the tin: After cooling the batter firmed up a bit but was still easy to spoon: After baking: Yum!