This recipe for Lemon Polenta Cake is one of my favorite Nigella recipes. She has an awful lot of great recipes to chose from, but this one is very tasty! The cake is simple to make, it is gluten free and most importantly it is really, really tasty. Most recipes I fiddle around with but I leave this one well alone – it is perfect just the way it is 😀. It is a sharp, syrupy cake that crumbles wonderfully when cut in to. I tend to serve Nigella’s Lemon Polenta Cake with Lemon Curd Cream and serve it as a dessert rather than a cake. If using as a dessert you can serve it slightly warm making it even more moist and syrupy. I whip cream (or yogurt) and swirl in some lemon curd to accompany this really special dessert. Alternatively, you can eat this cold as a cake. Whichever way, I think you’ll love it.
To my mind polenta is an odd ingredient but I do agree that its very versatile. It is made of coarse stoneground cornmeal. It has more of a ‘bite’ than Southern grits and it is still eaten widely in Italy. I have eaten it there in a number of different ways, as a side dish with butter, as a substitute to pasta and probably my favorite, as an accompaniment to meat where it was layered with cheese and shaped into a square. I’ve never eaten polenta cake in Italy so I am a little unsure whether this is something that it particularly popular there – I will have to do some research on it when I go there in June and report back!
Anyhow, I hope that you enjoy this recipe of Nigella’s. If you are unable to find a packet of ‘polenta’ in your local store look for ground cornmeal – that should have the same (ish) texture. True southern grits would, in my opinion, be too fine for this particular recipe – but I guess you could always try it 😀 and let me know!
- Prep Time: 20m
- Cook Time: 45m
- Total Time: 1h 5m
- Serves: 12
Ingredients
For the Cake
- 1 3/4 cups stick softened butter (200g)
- 1 cup superfine/caster sugar (200g)
- 2 cups almond meal/ground almonds (200g)
- 3/4 cup fine polenta (100g)
- 1 1/2 teaspoons gluten free baking powder
- 3 large eggs
- 2 lemons
- 1 cup powdered sugar/icing sugar (125g)
For the Cream
- 300 millilitres whipping cream/heavy cream/double cream or Greek yogurt
- 2 tablespoons lemon curd
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 180°C / 160°C Fan / 350°F
- Line a loose bottomed cake tin with baking paper and set aside
- In a freestanding mixer beat the butter and superfine/caster sugar together until it is light and fluffy.
- Put the almond meal, polenta and baking powder into a separate bowl and mix to combine.
- Add two tablespoons of the polenta/almond mixture to the butter mixture and beat to combine. Crack one of the eggs into this mixture and beat to combine. Continue to do this, alternating between egg and dry mixture until it is all combined.
- Add the zest of the two lemons to the mixture and stir in.
- Scrape the mixture into your prepared tin and gently smooth to the edges of the tin.
- Place in the center of the preheated oven and bake for 45 minutes. Check after 40 – it is done if the cake has come away slightly from the sides of the tin and a cake tester comes out cleanish. This is a wetish cake!
- Remove from the oven and place the cake on a wire rack, still in its tin, and leave it to cool whilst you make the syrup.
- Place the juice of the two lemons in a small saucepan and add the powdered sugar. Bring the mixture to the boil stirring all the time. Once the mixture boils, remove from the heat.
- Prick all over the top of the cake with a cake tester then pour the warm syrup over the top of the cake. Leave to cool before taking the cake out of its tin.
- Before serving, dust with powdered sugar for a prettier cake!
- If serving with lemon curd cream, place the cream in a bowl and whisk until the soft peak stage. Swirl two tablespoons of lemon curd through it.