recipe – yuzu polenta cake

a nod to our queen, Nigella

Hi again! So nice to have you back here :)

I wanted to share a recipe I made a few weeks ago: a Yuzu Polenta Cake. It was so good I even dropped off a few slices to friends - purely for validation purposes, of course. The verdict? Glowing reviews. And honestly, all praise and glory goes to our queen, Nigella. She absolutely nailed the ratios in this one.

I got a little funky with it and used both yuzus and oranges instead of lemons. I stumbled upon the most spectacular yuzus at my local markets and had to grab a few -even though they weren’t on my grocery list. (I’ve been trying really hard to stick to the list. Otherwise, I become unhinged at the markets and can barely carry my bags back to the car.) That’s actually why I bring Adam with me. Kidding! It’s his favourite time of the week too, to be fair.

Ingredients:

200g room temp unsalted butter

200g caster sugar

200g almond meal

100g polenta

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

3 eggs

2 yuzus (you'll use the zest and juice)

1 orange

125g icing sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to 160°C fan

Line the base of a cake tin, ideally a springform. Grease the sides with butter

Beat the butter and sugar till it's light and combined well. I like to use a handheld electric mixer but you could also do this by hand with a whisk. You want the butter to look whipped.

In a separate bowl mix the almond meal, polenta, and baking powder. Add a third of this mixture into the butter and sugar bowl, followed by 1 egg, beat together. Add the next third of ingredients followed by another egg. Beat together. Repeat until it's all combined.

Beat in the yuzu zest until combined.

Pour the cake mixture into the cake tin and bake for about 40 minutes.

While the cake is cooking, make the citrus syrup by adding the yuzu and orange juice with the icing sugar into a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir until the icing sugar has dissolved.

When you think the cake is done, check it with a skewer- if it comes out mostly clean then you're done. The edges of the cake should have caved in a bit from the sides of the tin.

Leave it in the cake tin and pour over the citrus syrup. Leave it to cool before taking it out of the tin.

To serve: I really liked this with a dollop of greek yogurt and garnished with yuzu zest.

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Notes: I used a springform cake tin, I flipped the cake upside down to serve (not sure why, just felt right), I liked it served with greek yogurt, Adam preferred it on it’s own, Nigella is the best.

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I’m currently in Barcelona, and after writing this, I’m seriously craving the sweet citrusy flavour of this yuzu cake. But I just can’t bring myself to buy all the ingredients when I know I won’t have time to use them up before I leave. So please - enjoy a slice for me, while I suffer from afar.

In the meantime, I made some cacao tahini cookies, inspired by a recipe my friend (and fellow Substacker) shared that had me drooling. Salivate here.

But of course - Sunday in Spain - everything is closed. No chance of running to the shops to grab what I needed. So, I worked with what I had: tahini, cacao powder, an egg, bicarb, peanut butter, agave syrup, and black sesame seeds. I chucked it all in a bowl and just eyeballed the amounts.

And honestly? They turned out pretty decent. Although... I definitely didn’t add enough agave syrup - goddammit! So they’re a touch (a lot) more “earthy” than I’d hoped. *I’m not used to baking with agave, maple syrup is really expensive here.

Ah well! You win some, you make slightly bitter cookies some.