Potty over Polenta

Sorry for the lack of posts, I have been away and busy with my real life, but i'm back in the kitchen trying out new recipes.

I have long been a fan of Polenta, the golden, soft, slightly gritty accompaniment to italian stews or the firm grilled or baked version as chips with steak, seasoned well with cheese and pepper. Delicious.  However I have never used it in a cake or in sweet recipes, although I have eaten my fair share of them.  As I have been asked to make a cake for this weekend and our little family excursion to Wales I thought that now would be the time to experiment (especially as my Mum is making a Dundee cake, so if it is a disaster we'll have that to eat anyway).

The unknowing got the better of me this morning so I am doing a trial run (fine polenta is so cheap £1.10 for 1.5kg) it seems rude not to use it and the recipe I have chosen is a Nigella one. She is very reliable for easy cakes that are a little different and so far it is going well! Plus it is Gluten Free too!


Here is the recipe and for once I have followed it faithfully:

For the cake

• 200 grams soft unsalted butter (plus some for greasing)
• 200 grams caster sugar
• 200 grams ground almonds
• 100 grams fine polenta (or cornmeal)
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder (gluten free if required)
• 3 large eggs
• zest of 2 lemons (save juice for syrup)

For the syrup

• juice of 2 lemons
• 125 grams icing sugar

Method

1. Line the base of a 23cm springform cake tin with baking parchment and grease its sides lightly with butter.
2. Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.
3. Beat the butter and sugar till pale and whipped, either by hand in a bowl with a wooden spoon, or using a freestanding mixer.
4. Mix together the almonds, polenta and baking powder, and beat some of this into the butter-sugar mixture, followed by 1 egg, then alternate dry ingredients and eggs, beating all the while.
5. Finally, beat in the lemon zest and pour, spoon or scrape the mixture into your prepared tin and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes.
6. It may seem wibbly but, if the cake is cooked, a cake tester should come out cleanish and, most significantly, the edges of the cake will have begun to shrink away from the sides of the tin. remove from the oven to a wire cooling rack, but leave in its tin.
7. Make the syrup by boiling together the lemon juice and icing sugar in a smallish saucepan.
8. Once the icing sugar’s dissolved into the juice, you’re done.
9. Prick the top of the cake all over with a cake tester (a skewer would be too destructive), pour the warm syrup over the cake, and leave to cool before taking it out of its tin.

Here it is!