Hazelnut Buckwheat Yogurt cake

What do you do with your 3 year old when it's too cold to play outside?  You bake, of course.  There must be thousands of blog posts devoted to this topic. I will spare you yet another cute story of a 3 year old learning to break eggs and mix batter.  Instead, I'll talk about the recipe.  Here were my requirements when finding the master recipe for our Friday baking sessions with Sammy

1) all ingredients need to be normally found in my pantry and fridge
2) no ingredients at room temperature -- with a toddler and a baby, I never know if and when baking can happen, so I need a recipe that is very forgiving
3) only 2 bowls -- one for wet and one for dry
4) no separating eggs
5) can be baked as either cake or muffins
6) lends itself nicely to variations

The yogurt cake from Chocolate & Zucchini seemed to fit all the requirements, so Sammy and I gave it a shot.    The first time we made it almost as is, replacing about 10% of AP flour with buckwheat and adding apples and blueberries.  It was great and leftovers were excellent for breakfast.

The second time, we were a little more adventurous and replaced 20% of AP flour with buckwheat and 20% with hazelnut meal.  This time we baked it as muffins stuffing some with pears and some with Nutella.  Both were yummy, but I have a soft spot for buckwheat chocolate combination and it looks like Sammy inherited this preference.  The only thing I would do differently next time is add Nutella after the cake or muffins are baked. It doesn't melt particularly well when added as a small lump before baking.  I am guessing, we could put it in a zip lock bag, cut the corner, and pipe like icing on top.  Bet Sammy would enjoy that.

Wet
2 large eggs
227g (1 cup) whole milk plain yogurt (we used Stonyfield)
200g (1 cup) sugar
70g (1/3 cup) vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp rum or brandy

Dry

260g (2 cups spooned and leveled) all-purpose flour (or 60g buckwheat, 60g hazelnut, and 140g all-purpose)

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

a good pinch of salt

• Preheat the oven to 350F.  
• Line the bottom of a round 9 or 10 inch cake pan with parchment paper and grease the sides.  Or grease 12 muffin cups (about 1/2 cup each).
• In a medium bowl (I use a 4 cup pyrex measuring cup), mix the wet ingredients.
• Sift dry ingredients into a large bowl.  
• Add the wet ingredients to the dry and fold gently just until no flour streaks remain.  Do not over-mix (a few little lumps are ok).
• Pour the batter into prepared baking pan.  If you want, push some fruit into it (apples, pears, plums, apricots, peaches, blueberries, raspberries, etc).  Optionally, sprinkle with some rolled oats and/or demerara sugar.
• Put in the oven until the toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Here are some rough baking times.  40-45 minutes for a 9 inch pan, 30-35 minutes for a 10 inch pan, 20-25 minutes for muffins.
• Let stand 10 minutes.  Run a knife around the outside to dislodge and transfer to a cooling rack.