This week we decided on a gluten free recipe. Straying slightly away from the classic lemon & polenta cake, we decided to go for an orange & polenta cake. But we wanted to make it that little bit more exciting and added a hint of rose water.
We recently went on an IKEA shopping trip to see what fun exciting things we could buy. Who doesn’t love a good IKEA trip?! You’re always bound to find something that you really do not need but you manage to convince yourself you NEED it and life wont be complete without it.
So, we purchased these cute little cake tins with patterns on them, amongst other thing, including our ice lolly moulds, we shall do a post on the rest as soon as we get chance. But these small tins just called out to us with endless possibilities of cake and other uses of them as moulds.
Anyway, we decided on the orange & polenta cake as it was that slight bit more summery and light to go with the gorgeous weather we have been having.
To grease our tins we chose not to line them as we wanted to get the lovely little patterns from the tin onto the cake, so we greased them like we would any other tin with a good greasing of butter followed by a dusting of flour. However as this is gluten free we used polenta instead of flour.
The cake itself is super easy to make; cream together the butter and sugar, add the eggs and then the polenta, ground almonds and baking powder, followed by the orange juice and zest. Note, to make this cake completely gluten free you will need to find a gluten free baking powder, but we just used regular.
After baking the cake we wanted to make it even more moist by brushing it with a sugar syrup flavoured with orange juice and a little rose water, giving us a delicious cake with a hint of fragrance.
- 200g caster sugar
- 200g softened butter
- 100g ground almonds
- 150g fine polenta
- 1.5 tsp baking powder
- 3 eggs
- 2 oranges, zest & juice
- 1 orange, zest & juice
- 2 tsp rose water
- 2 tbsp honey
- 50ml water
- 100g caster sugar
- In a pan, bring all the ingredients to a boil until the sugar has dissolved.
- Set aside to cool.
- Lightly grease your tins and dust with polenta, tap our any excess.
- In your stand mixer, cream together the butter and the sugar until light and fluffy, add the eggs one at a time until mixed together.
- Combine your almonds, polenta and baking powder together and fold into the mixture.
- Finally, add the orange zest and juice and pour into your prepared tin.
- Bake at 180C for 30-40 minutes, or until a knife will come out clean.
- Leave to cool slightly and remove your cake from the tin, brush all over with the syrup.
UNFORTUNATELY, our beautiful little tins didn’t serve us as well as we had hoped. We were unsure if it was the tin itself (it wasn’t a smooth non-stick pan), the greasing a dusting with polenta, or the fact that it was a gluten free, almond and polenta based cake. But after letting the cake cool slightly we put a knife around the edges and tipped it upside down, to find half the cake was left stuck in the tin. If anyone can help us with this problem PLEASE LET US KNOW!! Is it the tin? Or the cake?
We do plan to try these tins with regular cake mixes, rather than gluten free to see how they turn out, fingers crossed we find a use for them as they’re just adorable. If not we may have to use them as jelly moulds or something…
Nevertheless, the cake turned out heavenly – it really was delicious, especially with a good dollop of mascarpone to finish it off. It was perfectly moist and light and packed with flavour. If you’re ever unsure of using rose water in your baking, this will be a recipe to begin with!
Yum yum. Such a delicious recipe. Thanks for sharing this.
Simon
Thanks Simon!!