Orange Polenta Cake | Dairy Free & Gluten Free

This is a great recipe if you want a gluten free and dairy free cake recipe as you can replace the butter with vegetable oil and it still tastes absolutely incredible.

ingredients

• 200 grams soft unsalted butter or vegetable oil
• 200 grams caster sugar
• 200 grams ground almonds
• 100 grams fine polenta (cornmeal or Dove’s Farm plain gluten free flour)
• 1½ teaspoons baking powder
• 3 large eggs
• Zest of 2 oranges (save juice for syrup)

syrup ingredients

• Juice of 2 oranges
• 125 grams icing sugar

method

1. Line the base of a 23cm / 9inch springform cake tin with baking parchment and grease its sides lightly with butter.

2. Preheat the oven to 180°C/ gas mark 4/ 350°F.

3. Beat the butter and sugar till pale and whipped, either by hand in a bowl with a wooden spoon, or using a freestanding mixer.

4. Mix together the almonds, polenta 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.

5. Finally, beat in the orange zest and pour, spoon or scrape the mixture into your prepared tin and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes.

6. 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.

7. Mix together the orange juice and icing sugar. Once the icing sugar has dissolved into the juice, you’re done!

8. Prick the top of the cake all over with a cake tester (a skewer would be too destructive) and pour the syrup over the warm cake. Leave to cool before taking it out of its tin.

Images: HM