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!

2 comments:

  1. I do love the look of your cakes Scube, I keep dribbling! Sorry I've not been around for a while, life's been very hectic :)

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    1. I'll forgive you if you say you've tried baking your own bread :-)

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