First off, I should apologise for the truly awful pictures in this post. But it's such a good cake - actually it's better than a good cake - that I decided the share anyway.
The main reason that the photographs look so atrocious is because I was trying to cobble together slices from a cake that had completely collapsed. This was, I should stress, no fault of the recipe but merely my own stupidity.
I offered to make the dessert for a family party that my parents were hosting on Saturday night (which I ended up not being able to attend so dessert had to represent me in my absence). I pretty swiftly decided that I was going to make a lemon polenta cake; it worked with the rest of the menu and was gluten-free. Because of the number of people who were coming, I knew that I would have to make multiple cakes (plus one for my boyfriend and I to enjoy for the rest of the weekend) so I woke up early on Saturday ready to hit the kitchen.
The first two cakes emerged from the oven looking rather nice. The polenta gives a wonderful yellow-colour and perfect crunch. As I wanted to re-use the tins for the next two, I had to quickly transfer the cakes to a wire rack to cool. This worked fine for the first one using the age-old plate method (place a plate on top of the baking tin, turn it over and wait for the cake to pop out, then place a wire rack over the bottom of the cake and tip it back over). However once one cake was on the wire rack I obviously couldn't turn it over and so I attempted to flip the (hot) cake from the plate to the wire rack with my hands. Even as I started moving it, I knew it was going to end in disaster but I was transfixed as I watched it crumble in front of my eyes.
Onwards and upwards though! I attempted no such cake-gymnastics with the second two and so was able to present my other with three fully-formed cakes as boyfriend and I were left to pick over the remnants of the one that was left behind. And I attempted to take a somewhat passable picture of the one slice that I was able to carve out.
Don't let my stupidity put you off this cake though. It's really quite delicious. It's a fairly well known recipe from the River Cafe in London, the restaurant which launched the careers of, among others, April Bloomfield and Jamie Oliver. The recipe does make for a fairly large cake (it easily serves 12 people and requires a 30cm cake tin although I split the quantities below into two smaller cakes) but it can be halved without any problem.
~Lemon polenta cakeFrom the River Cafe CookbookYield: Serves 12
Ingredients
- 450g unsalted butter, softened
- 450g caster sugar
- 450g ground almonds
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 6 eggs
- Zest of 5 lemons
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 225g polenta
- 1 1/2 teaspoons gluten free baking powder (if you want a gluten free cake)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- Preheat the oven to 150C/300F. Grease a 30cm tin well.
- Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the ground almonds and continue to beat until combined.
- Beat in the eggs one by one.
- Fold in the lemon zest, lemon juice, polenta, baking powder and salt.
- Pour into the tins and bake for 40-50 minutes until golden brown. Turn onto a wire rack to cool.