Polenta Cake

This is a beautiful amalgam of Italian and English flavours which I found inspiration from Nigella lawson. She doesn't use any flour for this cake but I substituted half the almond mixture for flour and it resulted in less heavy and still amazing cake.

Ingredients;

for the cake


200 grams soft unsalted butter
200 grams caster sugar
100 grams ground almonds
100 grams plain flour
100 grams polenta ( or corn meal)
11/2 teaspoons baking powder
3 large eggs at room temperature
Zest of 2 lemons  or 2 oranges

For the syrup

Juice of 2 lemons or 2 oranges
75 grams icing sugar.

Method

Line the base of a 23cm / 9inch springform cake tin with baking parchment and grease its sides lightly with butter.
Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4/ 350°F.
Beat the butter and sugar till pale and whipped, either by hand in a bowl with a wooden spoon, or using a freestanding mixer.

Mix together the almonds, polenta,plain flour 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.
Finally, beat in the lemon zest or orange zest and pour, spoon or scrape the mixture into your prepared tin and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes.

It may seem wobbly 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.
I learnt from few mistakes that the tester coming out clean really doesn't work for the cakes that have ground almonds as it is clean even if the middle is uncooked due to the oil from almonds.I usually leave it for the time mentioned or even a bit longer just to make sure.If there is any worry about top getting burnt you can cover with silver foil.

Make the syrup by boiling together the lemon juice or orange juice and icing sugar in a smallish saucepan.
Once the icing sugar’s dissolved into the juice, you’re done.
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.

This is a really Moreish cake.It is really light (feels light I mean) and refreshing due to lemon in it.
One of my favourites!!