Vivian's king's cake or "Vassilopita" in greek

In Greece, the 1st of January we make our favorite cake or a special recipe from our region and we hide inside a coin (covered with aluminum foil, of course :) and we call it "Vassilopita". It's the equivalent of the "king's cake" or the "Galette de roi" that we find in other christian countries for the Epiphany.
We gather in family and share the cake and the one that will get the hidden coin will be the king of the year, aka the lucky of the year...
I will share with you the recipe that I adopted since the birth of my daughter, that is a very fluffy cake scented with orange zest and rich in ground almonds. You can make it all year through but it has some luxury touch that makes it a good candidate for a special occasion :) Here it goes...

 Ingredients
 2 1/2 cups of self raising flour
1 cup of margarine or 50-50 with butter
1 3/4 cups of sugar
4 eggs
250gr of strained yoghurt
100gr ground almonds
2 teaspoons of baking powder
zest of an untreated orange
Decoration: 100gr of chocolate and smarties or similar

Procedure

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees of Celsius.
Start by softening the butter in the microwave oven. Add progressively and mix using a mixer, the sugar, the eggs, the flour, the yoghurt and the rest and leave the almonds at the end to mix with a spoon.
Empty in a buttered round oven tray for cakes (30cm of diameter) or any other combination like I did today.

Bake for about 35min or until a knife comes out clean (classic Greek test for baking ;)

Cover with melted chocolate and decorate with smarties or similar candies. The goal is to emphasize that the cake is for the new year.

Happy New 2015!!!