Orange and Lemon Polenta Poppy Seed Cake

I am supposed to be sleeping, getting ready for a long flight to Hawaii in the morning.

But no, I cannot leave on holiday without first getting my affairs in order (ie posting for both of my blogs).

I made this cake last week with my excellent cousin Georgia. We were lacking in a car to drive places and we both kinda felt like cake.

For Mum's birthday Jack and I bought her the new Ripe Deli book

Ripe Recipes: A fresh batch.

Boy is it a great book! I have photocopied what seems to be every second page.

Amongst the wonderful recipes in this book was a recipe for gluten free orange and lemon polenta loaves.

They looked so moist and excellent in the picture. We had polenta, and ground almonds and plenty of oranges and lemons! The only thing we didn't have were the two loaf tins required. So we decided to turn this into a cake. And a large cake at that.

We used a 23cm round tin with decently high sides. The cake rose right to the very top! It was seriously the tallest single layer cake I had ever seen. It was really impressive looking. The high fat content also ensured the cake's easy removal from the tin. Overall making this cake was almost as much of a dream as that heart shaped feijoa cake a few weeks back.

This recipe was supposed to have chia seeds in it. We used poppy seeds instead. Sure they don't have all the super nutrients that chia seeds supposedly have but they give the same speckled effect.

Polenta comes from very finely ground corn, hence why this cake is gluten free (provided you use maize corn flour and gf baking power). The polenta lends quite a corny taste to this cake as well as a soft gritty texture. It is interesting and strangely addictive. The moistness of this cake is to die for. Make sure you put plenty of zest lemon icing on the top as well! We were too impatient to munch on cake while watching a movie so the warm cake caused the icing to dribble everywhere but really at the end of the day who cares?

We found the method of this cake really really weird. You have to boil the oranges and lemon for ten minutes then whizz them up in the blender to a pulp. Then this all gets added to the cake. Adding to the moistness I suppose.

Are you uncomfortable with the number of times I have said moist in this post so far?

Tehe.

Orange and Lemon Polenta Cake with Poppy Seeds

Makes one very tall 23cm cake

2 oranges, topped and tailed so that they can stand without rolling around in the saucepan.

1 lemon, topped and tailed

1 1/4 (210g) cup finely ground polenta

1/4 cup (35g) cornflour

1 cup (100g) ground almonds

2 teaspoons baking powder

3 tablespoons poppy (or chia) seeds

250g butter, softened

2 cups (440g) castor sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

6 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees on bake.

In a medium sized saucepan, place the oranges and lemon and then pour in boiling water until it reaches two thirds of the way up the fruit. Boil for five minutes, flip over the fruit then boil for another five. Remove from the water and set aside to cool a little.

Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time until the incorporated and fluffy.

In a separate bowl, mix together the polenta, almonds, corn flour, baking powder and poppy seeds.

In a blender or small food processor, blend the oranges and lemon to a smooth pulp.

Add a cup of the dry polenta mix and a few dollops of the pureed fruit mix to the butter-sugar-egg mix and mix until incorporated. Continue adding the polenta and puree alternately until it has all been mixed in.

Pour the mixture into a large, tall, lined and greased cake tin.

Bake for an hour then cover the tin with tin foil and bake for a further 30-40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Leave to cool before removing from the tin.

Once fully cool ice with a lemon glaze:

25g melted butter

2 cups icing sugar

juice of 1 lemon

Enjoy!

Lemon Blueberry Sour Cream Cake

Also known as the best summer fruit based cake known to mankind.

Today was one of those crazy baking days where you just seem to make one thing after the other.

Jack and his friend Will wanted banana cake. So I made banana cake.

Then my friend Ashleigh came around with a box full of blueberries. So we made this blueberry cake.

Then I felt like sending Jamal something in Dunedin. So I baked a brownie.

Then before you knew it I was getting everything out to start cooking dinner.

Anyway Back to the blueberry cake.

Ashleigh took a trip to the Coromandel and on her way stopped off in Ngatea to pick some blueberries. I have decided that another trip to Ngatea needs to be made as they were the best blueberries I had ever tasted and better still they were only $9 a kg. Brill!

I saw a recipe in my Julie Le Clerc Favourite Cakes book for a frosted lemon blueberry slab cake. I'm not a fan of slab cakes, they never look as pretty as a nice circle, so we decided to use a 23cm circular tin instead. You don't want too small a tin as the blueberries sink which would leave you with a massive layer of plain cake over the top of the blueberries.

I feel like the blueberries could also be substituted for raspberries if you happened to have those in the fridge. What I think makes this cake great is the lemony tang of the lemon is softened with the delicate flavour of the blueberries.

The sour cream also makes it delicious and moist. The sourness counteracts all the sugar making it less sickly sweet.

Then you add delicious, whipped and luscious lemony icing to the top.

Just make this cake ok. It is so great. I know I say that about a lot of cakes but this is different. It is Summery. It isn't chocolatey and heavy but light, airy and fruity. And since fruit is good for us, especially blueberries, it is basically calorie free.

But as we all know, calories don't even count between December and February.

True story.

Did I mention this was super easy to make?

Ok I'll stop blabbing now and get straight to the important bit.

Lemon Blueberry Sour Cream Cake
Adapted from Julie Le Clerc's Favourite Cakes
Makes a 23cm diameter cake

125g butter, softened
3/4 cup caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
Zest of 1 lemon
1 1/2 cup blueberries (fresh or thawed frozen ones)

Lemon icing:
30g butter, softened
2 cups icing sugar
Juice of 1 1/2 lemons

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees on bake.

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs in one at a time, beating well between each addition. Beat until fluffy and voluminous.

Mix in sour cream and lemon zest.

Sieve in the flour and gently fold in until just combined.

Add the blueberries and delicately mix in.

Transfer into a lined cake tin (preferably one with a removable base) and bake for 35-40 minutes or until the top turns golden and a skewer comes out clean. I found that the top of the cake browned quickly so to stop over browning I placed a piece of tin foil over the top.

Leave to cool for half an hour before removing from the tin and transferring to a cake rack. Leave to cool completely before icing.

To make the icing, beat all the icing ingredients together until smooth and fluffy. You may need more icing sugar or lemon juice depending on the resultant consistency.

Garnish with strips of lemon zest if you wish.

Enjoy with a nice glass of iced tea (we did!)

Baby Lemon Bundt Cakes

I found the best ever score at Pak n Save yesterday. Mini bundt tins with a gorgeous pattern to them and at only $7.99 for a pack of three. I bought six. Best purchase ever. I don't know how I am going to get all my new tins and books back down to Dunedin. It is gonna be a heavy ride. Who needs shoes and a hair drier when you have cake tins and cookbooks? I swear half of my luggage allowance is dedicated to bakeware.

Anyway, my good friend Cara bought me Nigella's How to be a Domestic Goddess for Christmas. It was an essential book and I just had to have it! What I love about this book is the way she writes. It isn't a sterile cookbook. She puts the time and effort into explaining things and reassuring you that the products of your adventures in the kitchen don't always turn out perfect and that's ok. She even points out the flaws in the pictures features, like chunks of cake missing as they stuck to the tin. The introduction is highly amusing and well worth the read. It is probably the best written cookbook I have come across. Each recipe has its own well thought out blurb recalling where the recipe came from, misadventures she may have had when making it as well as a few useful tips.

You should get it.

I had seen the mini bundt tins a few weeks ago but I withheld the purchasing of them, convincing myself that I didn't need them. Whilst flicking through Nigella I found a recipe where she used the mini tins. I was sold! So off to Pak n Save I dashed and immediately purchased the tins!

It wasn't until I was scooping the batter into the tins this morning that I realised that one of the tins was missing and had been left behind on the shelf. Ooops! So while I only made five mini cakes today I recommend making six as they kind of overflowed a bit and were a bit larger than I had hoped. Luckily I went back this afternoon and explained what had happened and the lost tin was reunited with its brothers in my kitchen drawer.

I actually made these little cakes for my brother to take two of them on a romantic sunset picnic with his thing/girlfriend (I have no idea of their official status!) this evening. I am also making Jack some mini bacon and egg pies to also take.

He owes me one.

Anyway I went to go and weigh out the ingredients when I discovered that our electric kitchen scales were deciding to have another crazy day and refused to weigh anything properly (they don't sit on a final value). I tried banging them against the bench, taking out the batteries but alas! I was just going to wait this one out. They will sort themselves out eventually. It always happens when I plan on getting up early to bake something.

I ended up having to google the weight to cup conversion for all the ingredients. Luckily it was only the flour and sugar that needed converting (the butter was from a new pack for I could estimate using the guidelines).

I'll give you both values below just in case you don't have decent kitchen scales (which you should have!!).

This recipe is so easy to make. You don't need a beater, just a spoon. There is no creaming of the butter and sugar involved, just mixing.

So great.

If you don't have mini bundt tins you could try mini loaf tins and I guess muffin tins as a last resort. Try serving the muffin versions with the icing on the bottom side of the cake (as in turn the muffins upside down to serve). It makes them slightly more interesting to look at.

I also sprinkled a bit of sugar over the top of the batter just before they went in. This gave them a lovely crunchy base which I think is great.

Baby Lemon Bundts
Adapted from Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess
Makes six little cakes

125ml (1/2 cup) plain unsweetened yoghurt
75g butter, melted
2 large eggs
zest of one lemon
150g (1 1/4 cups) Plain flour
125g (1/2 cup) caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt

For the icing:
1 1/2 cups icing sugar, sieved
juice of one lemon
1 teaspoon of butter, melted


Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and grease and flour the baby bundt tins.

Sieve together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and lemon zest.

In a separate jug or bowl, whisk together the melted butter, eggs and yoghurt.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and gently mix until no more flour clumps can be seen. Try not to overmix as this will result in a dense and chewy cake.

Fill the tins until just below the top of the centre tube (the inverse of the bundt hole), sprinkle over a little white sugar and bake for 20-25 minutes until a skewer comes out clean or and cakes bounce back when touched.

Leave to cool a little before removing the cakes form their tins. Soft, freshly baked cake is delicate and if the cakes are too hot when they are removed they can fall apart. Also don't leave them to fully cool in the tins as this can result in them sticking to the tins.

leave to cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

To make the icing, use as much of the lemon juice as necessary to make a thick but still drippable mixture. If it is too runny the icing will just run off the cake and only the bench creating a very sticky mess to wipe up later.

Decorate the cakes with a few long strands of lemon zest if you wish (I would have done this but my lemons were ugly and speckled).

Nigella says you can vary this recipe by using limes or oranges instead of the lemons. I think I might have to give them a go. This would also work really well as a syrup cake recipe. Instead of making the icing, make up a lemon syrup with say half a cup of caster sugar, the juice of a lemon and a splash of water. Simmer in a saucepan until a syrupy consistency is reached then pour the hot syrup over the cold cakes.

Enjoy!!

Lemon, Poppy Seed and Yoghurt Syrup Loaf

Around three months ago Mum bought some plain Collective Dairy Co yoghurt. Two months ago it expired. As disturbing as it may sound, we are still eating this yoghurt. I thought it was a different container of yoghurt, not the same one that I had opened when I was last up on holiday. When I tasted it and smelt it, it was fine. It wasn't until I checked the label did I realise our poor ability to eat plain yoghurt. We have been putting blobs of it here and there on our dinners and things and none of us have died so far.

As I mentioned in my last post, I am on a baking ban. The Edmonds family household apparently does not need baked goods of any kind. Apparently it makes them fat. I think my parents current lack of gym memberships are what is causing that. My brother Jack and I sweat it out every morning without fail. 

Yoghurt always goes nicely with lemon to make delicious, moist lemon yoghurt cakes drowned in a sweet sweet lemony syrup. 

I found a recipe in my Cake Days book for a lemon poppy seed loaf. Only thing was that this loaf used ricotta instead of yoghurt. I substituted this for the yoghurt I needed to use up. Yoghurt helps to keep the cake nice and moist. It turned out wonderfully.

The thing that really makes this loaf delish is the syrup you pour over the top of it as soon as it comes out of the oven. I doubled the syrup quantity to ensure a yummy moist loaf. Mmmm so moist. 

Have I made you feel uncomfortable with the word moist yet?

Right, anyway. This recipe is super simple. It follows a standard cake making method. Make sure the butter and sugar is creamed nice and well as when you add the egg in. The more volume you create here the lighter the sponge will be. Light sponge = good sponge = soft, delicate sponge.

I enjoy cake maths.

Sooo lets get on with the show eh?

Lemon, Poppy Seed and Yoghurt Syrup Loaf

Very adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery's Cake Days

For the loaf:

190g softened butter

190g castor sugar

190g plain flour

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon baking powder

4 tablespoon poppy seeds

2 large lemons worth of zest

25ml milk

100g plain yoghurt

For the soaking syrup:

Juice of two large lemons

100g castor sugar

100ml water

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees, bake. 

Cream together the butter and sugar until almost white in colour and fluffy in texture. Add the eggs, beating well after each addition. Keep beating until the volume increases substantially and the texture is even fluffier than before. Beat in the lemon zest.

In a separate bowl, sift together the baking powder and flour. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter, sugar and egg mixture, beating after each addition. 

Once all the flour has been added, add the milk and the yoghurt and poppy seeds. Beat until smooth. 

Line the bottom side of a loaf tin with baking paper. Grease the sides with butter and dust with flour. 

Pour the batter into the tin and spread with a spoon so that it evenly fills the tin.

Bake for 50-60 minutes (check after 50 minutes by inserting a clean skewer into the middle, if it comes out with batter still stuck to it, pop it back in the oven for another wee while but make sure you cook it for no longer than  65 minutes). 

While the loaf is baking, make the syrup. Put the lemon juice, sugar and water in a sauce pan and bring to the boil. Making sure it doesn't spill over, reduce the syrup until it reaches around half its original volume or at least until it has a consistency slightly runnier than that of maple syrup. 

As soon as the loaf comes out of the oven, pour over the syrup. Leave to cool before turning out onto a cake rack. Leave to cool fully before slicing (or else it crumbles!).

Slice into nice thick slices and enjoy this in the hot summer sun with a nice cool and refreshing lemony drink. 

Enjoy!!