Organic Lemon & Almond Polenta Cake

Ooh how I love this cake!

It might be the chewy crust, deep caramelised flavour or the citrusy kick. Or it might just be the fact that this gluten-free cake is super EASY to make and a delight to eat!

Make your own almond flour

I try to source almonds that are:

• local (we are lucky enough in SA to have local almonds, not always possible if living overseas). I source all my nuts & seeds from By Nature.
• unpasteurised (most almonds from the US has to by law be pastueurised, which could effect the flavour and nutritional value.
• skin on

Most nuts can be made into a flour by whizzing them up fine enough. All you need is a high-speed blender, like a NutriBullet and you can make your own flour in no time. If using a NutriBullet you would need to whizz the flour in batches to ensure it’s fine enough.

Worth noting that if you leave any nut to whizz up too finely – you will end up, eventually, with a nut butter, but whizzing for 30 seconds at a time would be all you need to make a flour.

Flavour TIP: Roasting the almonds in the oven before whizzing them into a flour will make all the difference. I roast whole almonds in the oven on 180c for 5-7min or until I can smell them toasting

A note on cornmeal (polenta)

Polenta is a dish and not just an ingredient which is confusing. Originating in Northern Italy, the key ingredient in most polenta dishes are cornmeal, which is basically a grainy flour made my milling dried corn/maize.

Cornmeal can also be used as a gluten-free flour substitute in cakes and breads (cornbread!). It’s a little confusing, but for the purposes of baking, cornmeal is actually called polenta (it’s weird, I get it).

Not all polenta flours are the same

I like my ingredients to be as unrefined as possible. This simply means I want any ingredient I am using, to be as close to its natural state as possible.

Polenta flours can be divided into grains that are finely milled, thus making the polenta fine and quick cooking and cornmeal that’s unrefined making the polenta course and therefore it takes at least 40 minutes to cook. THIS is the kind I like.

You might prefer the softer, finer textured polenta which is 100%.

I get my polenta from a very special regenerative farm in Prieska, in the Northern Cape, called Lowerland where organic farmer Bertie Coetzee, farms as close to nature as possible. I love the fact that the maize and grains that he grow on the farm, are from ancient and heritage varieties and are also stone ground for maximum preservation of texture, nutrients and flavour.

The cake wants to stick!

The cake tends to want to stick so please make sure you very generously line your 20cm non-stick loose based cake tin well with butter  and flour (I added a few sprinkles of polenta too). Tip the excess flour out and for extra measure, I pop the tin into the fridge, ready to be filled.

The topping is EVERYTHING

The cake bakes to a deep golden (‘brown’) which might not look massively appetising and I decided to ‘jazz’ up the normal sprinkle of icing sugar with a marvellous lemon sherbet like sprinkle. By whizzing three tablespoons of icing sugar with lemon peel it totally transforms the icing sugar to something fragrant and special – but a simple dusting of icing sugar would be perfect too.

Getting ahead

The cake will easily keep for 3 days – if it lasts that long.

Seasonal swaps

This cake is a fabulous base to add any citrus you would like, limes, oranges and even grapefruit would work well.

Serving suggestions