Balsamic Reductions

I love this cake. I wanted to find a recipe for a cornmeal cookie when I came across recipes for this classic Italian dessert. I originally printed out Nigella Lawson’s recipe to try, but I didn’t want to pour a lemon syrup over my cake. I just added the lemon right into the batter and ended up with an amazing  pound cake with a crumbling texture and lemon kick, that’s incidentally entirely gluten free!

I guess I like dense cakes. This one definitely competes with my dark chocolate and rosemary olive oil cake – they both have a wonderful everyday feel to them. There’s nothing fancy and frosted about them, just dense and satisfying with enough sweetness to brighten your day and enough weight to make for a good breakfast if you manage to have leftovers.

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Lemon Polenta Cake

The Method

• 2 cups almond flour
• 3/4 cup fine polenta/cornmeal
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder (gluten-free if required)
• 1 3/4 sticks soft butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• Zest and juice of 2 lemons

The Madness

Preheat your oven to 350. Then line the base of a springform cake pan with parchment paper and grease its sides lightly.

In one bowl beat the butter and sugar till pale. In another bowl mix the almond flour, polenta and baking powder. Beat1/3 of  your dry ingredients into the butter-sugar mixture, followed by 1 egg, then alternating dry ingredients and eggs, until everything is incorporated.

Zest and juice your lemons into the batter and give it one final mix. Spoon everything into your prepared pan (you can sprinkle an little sugar on top for a bit of crispness) and bake for about 50 minutes. Remove from the oven to a wire cooling rack, but leave in its pan.

This cake can be baked up to 3 days ahead and stored in airtight container in a cool place. Will keep for 5 to 6 days if you can actually go that long without eating it all.

Related posts

• Savory meet Sweet. You guys could really get along - Olive Oil Cake
• Reasons for Cravings - Plum Tart
• Look Ma! I Baked! - savory apple tart
• My Life in a Pie
• Brunch Problem Solved - Egg Cups
• The (almost) Secret Recipe of the (almost) Famous Ginger Snaps
• The City's Great Street Stalls - making apricot upside down cake
• On Inventing - are you willing to fail?
• My Current Obsession: Butter (can you blame me?)
• A Refreshing Start - 5 tips for healthy smoothies