Recipe: Citrus polenta cake

Ingredients

200 gms of unsalted butter

200 gms of caster sugar

200 gms of ground almonds

100 gms of fine polenta (or cornmeal)

1 ½ tps of baking powder

3 large eggs

Zest of 2 lemons

Method

Firstly, start with lining the base of a 23cm / 9inch cake tin with baking parchment and grease its sides lightly with butter.
Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4/ 350°F.

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

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.

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

If the cake is cooked, a cake tester should come out clean 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.

Your dish is ready to be served.