While it's only the beginning of the week, it always ends up being my weekend, yay to Tuesdays! These are the days when I get the most baking done when I'm not teaching cooking classes.

Nothing says day-off happiness like citrus seasons...at least for me...I don't know about you. But when I see blood oranges in stock, I panic and buy all I can cause next week they might not be there. With my bounty of blood oranges, this was first on my list to make on my day off.

I've realized as February is coming to an end quickly, I have less than 60 days until I go to Italy! Finalizing trips and classes, my boyfriend is most excited for his morning trips getting fresh blood orange juice when we grab our big slab of focaccia in Florence. So of course he's been happily eating this cake while we continue planning this trip.

This recipe uses a lot of the citrus, not just the juice but also the zest! I get upset when people go straight for cutting citrus and forget all about that delicious flavor on the skin of any citrus. If you've got a microplane, you should try zesting that first layer of skin and adding to anything that calls for citrus, whether it's baking or adding in cocktails. You only want to zest the first layer, once you've gone over a spot on the blood orange, you don't go back over it, otherwise you'll start pulling the bitter part, yuck.

The benefit to adding the zest is all that delicious flavor held in the rind. When you cook or bake with any citrus juice, it can still cook out some of the flavor, but if you add juice AND zest, you'll get a solid flavor foundation.

Using oil in cake always helps the texture of your cake from drying out and giving it a little fluff. With this cake, I like to add a bonus ingredient to really elevate the texture, yogurt! As I like to say, "Kaylin looooves her yogurt" (Brooklyn 99 is the best show, end of discussion). I use whole milk yogurt but if you can find whole milk greek yogurt that equally works great. I can't stress enough on the importance of whole milk, it provides a great texture versus low to non-fat yogurts that don't provide the right mouth bite. If you're in the market for a vegan yogurt, I really enjoy Kite Hill almond yogurt for my vegan recipes.

If you aren't lucky enough to find blood oranges this season, don't sweat it! A combination of grapefruit and orange works wonderful. So warm up your zesters and get to making this delicious cake, just make sure to leave enough glaze for the cake while your eating it straight up with a spoon. 😉