For those of you who have never tried TOTAL, it is a 100% authentic and natural greek yoghurt, it's lovely and thick and also easier and more stable to cook with than greek-style yoghurts.  Therefore we were excited to have an opportunity to extend our yogurty recipe repertoire with Total's recent launch of their new recipes collection 1000 Ways to Love your TOTAL all including the lovely stuff over at their website.  They have also launched a great Facebook app so you can get inspiration for dinner without having to leave the Facebook site.

The sponge seemed simple enough to make it was a case of mixing the eggs with the sugar and butter. I was a bit concerned that it was a little wet with four eggs but then I realised that the majority of the rise would be coming from those eggs as their was very little flour in the recipe.  Then the dry ingredients were added, ground hazelnuts were not available so I had to grind up some chopped nuts in my food processor, in hindsight I think I should have ground a little longer as they were very obvious in the final cake.  My main problem was I wasn't sure what tin to cook the cake in, so after spooning it into a loaf tin I had a moment of panic that it would overflow and rescued it from the oven pouring it into a larger 12 inch cake tin. The syrup was a doddle to make, just as the recipe states and was done in a trice.

Relief!  Despite my worries about taking it out of the oven the Semolina Cake came out looking and smelling delicious, I found the ladle-ing over of the syrup simple and quite good fun. Unfortunately however the final result wasn't to my personal taste at all, I found there was too much going on to make it enjoyable to eat. (Little D enjoyed it though!)

I think it would have been nicer if I reduced the poppy seeds and replaced the hazelnuts for additional ground almonds.That being said I parceled it up and shared it with my neighbours and there have been no complaints yet so maybe it was just me. The syrup was gorgeous though, seriously good, and  I think I would make this again as it would be lovely over a simple sponge or reduced further over ice cream or Total greek yoghurt.