Scenes from the weekend: cakes, lasagna, vino and more cake

                           Baking, creating new recipes and spending time with friends were all necessary ingredients for a fun filled weekend.

 My friend's daughter celebrating her 3rd birthday party. The kids loved all 3 cakes that my friend baked. Isn't she talented?

 I tried all three of them, but you only see two pictures, that's because I ate the third slice so fast (it was chocolate) then realized it was all gone and I didn't take a photo. It was that good!

At home

I made French lemon cake with only 9 ingredients, you can find my recipe here.

Baked vegetarian lasagna in a skillet

and while the lasagna baked here is a view of the sea (picture taken earlier in the week).

The lasagna turned out delicious.

 I was so surprised that Beli took a nap two days in a row this weekend. The last time she took an afternoon nap was about a month ago! And while she slept I enjoyed watching all the boats out at sea. Fishermen working on Sunday.
                                                    

How was your weekend? Have you started any Christmas shopping? Don't worry, you still have about a month before you can start panicking like me. I have no idea what to get all my 5 nephews.

A French-Croatian Lemon Cake

This past Saturday we had lunch at my husband's parents home and I wanted to prepare a dessert for them and I remembered I had a recipe from my friend Nelly. She prepared it for our class a few weeks ago and was kind enough to share her French yogurt cake recipe.

After I took it out of the oven I sprinkled some vanilla sugar for decor.

I call this my first French-Croatian home-made lemon yogurt cake (what a mouthful of a name right?)

It turned out fantastic: moist and not too sweet (I was worried with 3 cups of sugar!) plus I was able to use my hand-picked lemons! The lemon zest gave it a kick. My family enjoyed it with a cup of coffee but you can also enjoy it with a warm cup of tea, or a glass of milk.

And just like my friend, I too will share the recipe with you.

1 cup yogurt (plain or vanilla flavored)

3 eggs

1 cup oil (I used sunflower oil because corn oil is not available here, although I could have used olive oil but that would not have gone well with this cake)

3 cups sugar

1 teaspoonful vanilla extract

4 cups flour

1& 1/2 teaspoonful of baking powder

1 teaspoonful of rum-aroma

grated lemon zest (1 large lemon)

1 packet of vanilla sugar (A Croatian product, but you can easily substitute and mix your own) or you can omit it from the recipe.

Sift the flour and baking powder(to make the mix more fluffy) into one bowl. In another bowl, whisk all the other ingredients then combine the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and slowly mix, then pour into a greased loaf pan and bake for 50 minutes at 350 Degrees. Time of baking may vary depending the type of oven you have. I'll advice that you set a timer at 40 minutes and then check to see if it's done (insert a toothpick in the center, if it's clear then it's done otherwise you need to bake it a bit longer).

Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.