3 cups of all purpose flour
2 cups of yogurt (home-made)
1½ cups of granulated sugar
1 teaspoon of baking soda
2½ teaspoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
1 cup of olive oil
Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 200°C for 10 minutes. Grease and lightly dust an 8 cups bundt pan.
2. Beat the sugar and yogurt for 5 minutes on high speed. Add baking powder and baking soda, beat in on low, and allow to stand for 3 minutes. You will find that bubbles appear.
3. Beat in the oil and vanilla extract. Slowly add the flour in 4 lots, blending in well after each addition.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake at 200°C for 10 minutes, reduce temperature to 170-180°C and bake for 50 minutes or till a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.
5. Cool the cake for 30 minutes and gently de-mold. Then place onto a plate.

I love that both the ingredients and instructions are simple and straightforward, it really took very little time to make up the batter and the cooking time was accurate.

My own tips that I would add are: Make sure to grease the tin very well, allow a good bit of cooling before you gently remove the tin and it rises quite a bit, so don't overly fill the tin.

I didn't try to make the chocolate glaze in the recipe as I really liked the glaze from the Betty Crocker recipe.  It is super quick to make. Just blend together a cup of icing sugar, a quarter cup of maple syrup, half a teaspoon of vanilla extract and a a quarter spoon of cinnamon.

The first time I made it, it was a little too thick so I made it thinner this time, perhaps slightly too thin but it was definitely much easier to drizzle over the cake. You can easily adjust by adding more sugar or maple syrup.

'Can anyone tell me why, in a time when it is pretty much accepted that it's unreasonable to discriminate against people, single people are apparently the exception.
Every time I've turned on the radio this week, I've been faced with the Supervalu advert telling me that if I add my partner to my car insurance, I'll get a 25% discount.

While that may be a nice offer for many of you, for me, it's yet another penalty for being single. I manage the costs of running a household alone, all the bills, the rent, the heating, the electricity are all on me. Now, to make things worse, I'm told that if only I had a partner, I would pay almost €200 less car insurance.

How is this not discrimination?

Imagine if, instead of discriminating against single people, an insurer decided to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or skin colour. 'If you're white, you get 25% off. If you're heterosexual, you get 25% off.' That couldn't happen. No advertising team would propose it. No company would broadcast it. (And rightly so!)
But apparently it's ok to discriminate on grounds of relationship status. Probably the company is patting themselves on the back, hoping to poach customers from other insurers in a market where shopping around is now essential just to stay on the road.

Mostly people like me don't complain. We haven't got the time or the energy. We know we've failed in the eyes of society. We know our children are being brought up in families which are regarded as broken. To be honest, I'm too knackered to care what people think, as long as the kids are happy. I can live with my decisions, and would do the same again. I'm not looking for handouts. I work hard to keep things afloat, and I'm doing a good job. But the reality is that life is an endless juggle of work and family. Juggling finances month by month. My family is lucky, we don't have to choose whether to buy food or heating, but I'd be lying if I said it was easy. Life's harder when you don't have another adult to share not just the costs, but the endless taxiing of teenagers and young adults, the emotional crises of exam years. I knew all this before, but now, when I flick on the radio in the car as I drive to work, I want to scream out loud at the blatant discrimination. I'm no sensitive flower. I'm not asking that people don't broadcast things that might offend me. I realise this isn't a conspiracy to make my life harder. But seriously, did any of the advertising team who came up with this consider how galling it is for a single parent to hear?'