This Blackberry Blood Orange Breakfast Cake is a summery twist on an Italian classic. Juicy blackberries and hints of tangy blood orange give this lightly sweet yogurt cake plenty of personality to accompany your morning coffee.
I’m so excited about this recipe for so many reasons.
In 2016, I traveled with my husband, bonus parents and bonus sister to Italy. It was incredible, and I’m pretty sure I belong there. Yes, I know it’s one of the most overly-romanticized places on Earth. Yes, I know there are problems there too—I watch Last Week Tonight. But really, I’ve spent so much time since trying to replicate the feeling of being there at home.
This cake feels like Tuscany. The flavor and texture. The ingredients. The simplicity. Everything.
It was inspired by a traditional yogurt and olive oil cake made in the medieval hill town of San Gimignano in the Siena, Tuscany region of Italy. Torta allo yogurt is a classic. Don’t be afraid of the olive oil. You won’t taste it in this recipe any more than you would taste the flavor of canola oil, and it’s incredibly common in Italian baking, which is all about what’s available locally.
Part of the reason this dessert caught my eye is that the first variation of this recipe I saw in A Family Farm In Tuscany: Recipes and Stories from Fattoria Poggio Alloro by Sarah Fioroni (about a farm near where we took an agrotourism excursion) is so simple that it uses a yogurt cup as a form of measurement for the flour, oil and sugar. I just love that.