Sunday, February 27, 2011

Polenta cake revisited

My last polenta cake was a bit heavy on the polenta. Without cream or ice cream as an accompaniment, it was dry in the mouth. This one was gooier, and more readily digestible. Its shortcoming was that, once upended from the tin, it fell to bits. My mistake, I think, was failing to allow it properly to cool first.

225g butter
225g caster sugar
3 eggs
200g ground almonds
125g quick-cook polenta
1tsp baking powder
1tsp vanilla essence
2 lemons - zest and juice


Cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs. Recipes often tell you to add them one at a time; but you're unlikely to get a smooth mixture whatever you do, and the dry ingredients will stabilise it anyway.

Stir in the almonds, polenta, baking powder, vanilla, and lemon.

Pour the batter into a 20cm cake tin (a springform one if you like), and cook it at gas mark 3/160C for about 40 minutes. That timing comes from a majority of recipes rather than from my own experience, which suggests that the cake may take up to an hour to set.

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