Recipe > Baking
Lemon, Almond and Polenta Cake

The back of a pickup truck, packed with muddy travellers and damp backpacks, going over dirt roads with potholes the size of craters, in the outback of Cambodia,would normally seem like an unlikely place to be exchanging recipes, however some recipes were meant to be liberated and the possibility of being thrown into a rice paddy at high velocity from a rabid chevrolet truck wasn’t going to stop such important culinary diplomacy. The French girl who passed over this recipe, (while holding on to the side of the bucking pickup with white knuckled hands) practically swore by it, claiming it to be easy to make and even easier to eat. She was right.
Serve with vanilla ice cream or blood red orange sorbet.

Serves 8

Ingredients

375g / 13oz unsalted butter
375g / 13oz caster sugar
375g / 13oz ground almonds
5 eggs
2 Tsp good vanilla essence
2 lemons, zest and juice of
195g / 11 oz polenta
1 ¼ Tsp baking powder
Pinch of table salt

Mise-en-Place:
Preheat the Oven to Gas Mark 4/ 170°C/ 325°F
Line a 9 inch baking tin with baking parchment
Liberally paint the tin's sides and baking parchment with melted butter
Zest and juice the lemons
Mix the polenta, baking powder and salt together (we'll call this the 'dry mix')

Method:
Either with an electric whisk or in a mixing machine cream the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.
Beat in the ground almonds.
Beat the egg, vanilla and lemon mix in small additions into the creamed mixture.
Fold in the dry mix
Taste for seasoning, if you desire you may add more lemon juice and zest.
Turn the cake mix into the prepared cake tin, bake in the oven for 40 minutes.
At end of baking time test the cake by inserting a warm skewer, if it comes out clean or with a few crumbs on it, it is done. However if the skewer comes out wet return to oven for another 5-10 minutes cooking time.
Leave cake in the tin for 10 minutes to cool, then remove and place on wire rack to cool completely.
Leave for 2 hours before cutting.

Presentation:
Simply serve a slice of cake with a helping of blood red orange sorbet, vanilla ice cream or clotted cream

Hygiene point:
As a chef it is always important to taste everything that you produce. However be aware that trying uncooked cake batter can poise a hygiene risk with its uncooked eggs.
(But you've got to admit that this cake mix tastes slightly like ice cream! Crazy, weird but yummy.)

Science behind the dish:
The addition of the almonds to the butter and sugar mix before the eggs allows the mixture more space to emulsify, thus the mix is less likely to 'split' (which is where the fats and other ingredients fall out of emulsion)