Lemon Polenta Cake

Ingredients:

200g soft butter (or 150ml olive oil if you want to make it dairy free)

150g caster sugar or 200g brown sugar

200g flour

150g polenta (cornmeal)

2tsp baking powder

3 large eggs/ 4 small eggs

zest from 2 lemons and from half of orange

juice of 2 lemons (aprox. 75ml)

150g icing sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C for fan assisted oven/ 180°C/Gas mark 4/ 350°F.

2. Mix the butter and sugar together until you have a nice and uniform cream. You can do this either with a mixer or by hand with a whisk. We personally prefer doing this with a hand mixer.

3. In a separate bowl mix the rest of the dry ingredients (flour, polenta, baking powder).

4. Add one third of the dry ingredients over the butter and sugar cream (or a quarter of the dry ingredients if you are using 4 eggs) and mix well until smooth, followed by 1 egg. Repeat this step till you have incorporated all of the dry ingredients and eggs.

5. Next, add the lemon and orange zest into the batter you have obtained.

6. Line the base of a cake tin (20x20cm or 23cm diameter if round) with baking paper and grease it with some butter.

7. Pour the batter into the tin and bake in the oven for about 35-40 minutes.

8. Poke the cake with a toothpick or a skewer or a cake tester. If the skewer comes out clean then the cake is baked and should be removed from the oven but let the cake sit in its tin until cooled.

9. In the meantime make the syrup for the cake. Boil the lemon juice together with the icing sugar until the icing sugar has melted.

10. Poke the cake with a toothpick all over the top and pour the warm (not boiling!) syrup over the cake.

11. (optional) When the cake has cooled you can sprinkle some icing sugar on top for a nice and easy finish.

Enjoy!