Chocolate and Ginger Yogurt Cake

This is another version of the Lemon Yogurt Anything cake, first seen on Smitten Kitchen. This, in turn, was originally an Ina Garten recipe for a lemon cake with no fruit. My version reduces the amount of liquid slightly, as I don't add the lemon juice, but it has turned into a really good basic cake which is highly adaptable to make many differently flavoured versions. I had a similarly versatile cake recipe using butter, which I could mix up and get into the oven in a very short time, so I'm very pleased to have found a lower saturated fat version. They are really useful recipes when all you have available are store cupboard ingredients.

Ingredients
170g plain flour
30g cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon powdered ginger
200g caster sugar
250g low fat yogurt*
110g sunflower oil
3 large eggs
150g chopped plain chocolate
4 balls of preserved stem ginger, finely chopped.

*I used 125g fat-free vanilla yogurt and 125g low fat natural yogurt, as I was short of  enough natural yogurt.

Method
Prepare a 20cm (8") round springform cake tin, and pre-heat the oven to 180C.
Put the flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder, powdered ginger and sugar into a large bowl and mix with a ballon whisk.
In a large jug, mix together the eggs, yogurt and oil.
Add the wet ingredients to the flour mix and stir briskly (but don't beat) until thoroughly combined.
Fold in the chopped chocolate and stem ginger.
Spread evenly in the prepared tin and bake for about 50-60 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean.
Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then remove from tin and cool on a wire rack.

For a simple 'everyday' cake this turned out really well. The texture was light and moist and there was just the right amount of ginger to be noticeable, but not overpower the chocolate flavour. Another successful variation - these sort of cakes are different everytime I make them as the 'add-in' ingredients vary according to what's available, but I will remember how good this one was!