Tuesday, 25 September 2012

Gluten-free Lemon Polenta Cake

 
I've been meaning to try a Lemon Polenta Cake Recipe for a while, which I found on the back of a packet of Imbhams Farm Polenta Flour.  I finally got around to it this weekend, as a good excuse to use up a lemon excess.
 
Recipe as follows:-
 
115g Fine Polenta
175g Unsalted Butter - softened
225g Demerara Sugar
200g Ground Almonds
3 Large Free Range Eggs 
Zest of 3 Lemons and the juice of 1.5 Lemons
1 tsp Gluten Free Baking Powder
 
Unless you are gluten intolerant then its absolutely fine to use normal baking powder as a substitute.  I also chose to use the juice of 2 lemons, as the more lemony the better!
 
You need to preheat the oven to 160c and line a 20cm baking tin with parchment or a tin liner.
 
All ingredients can be put into a food processor and whizzed to a smooth batter, but mine doesn't have enough capacity.  Instead I whizzed the butter, polenta and sugar together in the processor and then moved the whole lot down into the Kenwood mixing bowl and added first the eggs (1 at a time), followed by the almonds, baking powder and then the juice and zest.  Its quite a wet mixture, but then I did add extra lemon juice.
 
It was then popped into the lined tin and into the oven. 
 
 


Now, I normally bake cakes in a static oven and the recipe did not stipulate whether it was fan or static.  You are recommended to bake it for 50 - 55 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.  After 50 minutes in a static 160c oven, the centre of the cake was still really wet, so I flipped it over to fan over for another 10 - 15 minutes.  By this time the top was colouring quite a lot and still a bit moist in the centre, but then I don't think this cake should be dry.  Its then left in the tin to cool, before devouring.




Its gorgeous still warm from the oven and would be lovely with ice-cream and perhaps some extra lemon syrup to drizzle over it.  The demerara sugar also gives it a nice crunch. Whilst still tasty cold, it does become a lot more crumbly over the next day or so, so best eaten sooner rather than later - shame that!  Whilst Googling to see if anyone else had tried it, I found a lady who had added blueberries to it - sounds scrummy.

My other baking attempt this weekend was a 100% Rye flour loaf that I had seen in my new copy of Paul Hollywood's How to Bake.  An absolute bargain if you can get it at this price.  Even cheaper than my Amazon copy!

I think I need to try this again and maybe add a bit more water as it did seem very dense.  The black treacle in it gives it an unusual taste.  Though not unpleasant when toasted with marmite.  What a surprise!



I can't wait to try more recipes from this book and its the Great British Bake-Off on telly tonight too!

Happy Baking!

Saturday, 8 September 2012

The Knitting Mojo Returns!

If the truth be told, the mojo never left, just the body wasn't willing.  However, normality is slowly returning and I'm now knitting, baking, running and of course working like a trooper!  I still have to be careful, but all is good in Scubamonkey world.

I've not been idle.  Throughout the Ravellenic Games I had a good excuse to finish a WIP (work in progress) hot water bottle cover that had been hiding at the bottom of the basket for months.........



I couldn't resist the sheep ribbon for the tie.  This is being saved for a Xmas pressie. 

Ellie got a new pair of socks, which she seems to be quite partial to :-)

 
 
I had fun knitting this lovely Lotus hat, which was taken to Canada as a gift for Rosa........
 
 


All of which helped me get some Ravellenic medals which you can see on the project pages (apologies to non-Ravelry users, as the links will not work for you).

I'm also taking part in a Knit-a-long with a German Group which a dear Rav friend got me involved in and so far I've completed this pair of socks .........



The next pair has been started and in the interim I also found time to make OH a new camping hat!



Obviously that's me doing the modelling!

Phwew I've been busy!  For more Finished Object Fridays posts head over to Tami Ami's blogspot

Happy Knitting!