A friend passed away a few weeks ago. I may or may not write more about that later. Right now I’m still struggling a bit with the words and how I feel.
She was an amazing chef and an even better human being. One of the ways her friends and fans are honoring her memory is by making and sharing some of the recipes from her book, Dolce Italiano (you can see some of the other things I baked from Dolce Italiano here). Becky and I decided to participate.
After returning from a trip to Costco with a bag of meyer lemons, it was a toss up between her lemony semolina cookies, her lemon tart or her Citrus Glazed Polenta Cake, which won out because we’d already made the cookies in the past (they’re a favorite) and we were too impatient to wait for the tart crust to chill for her lemon tart.
This cake was easy, comes together quickly and goes nicely with a cup of coffee or tea.
Citrus Glazed Polenta Cake
Ingredients
- 4 large eggs
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- grated zest of 1 lime, 1 lemon and 1 orange (save the fruit for their juice below)
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 3/4 cup fine or instant polenta
- 2t baking powder
- 1t salt
- 3/4 olive oil
- 2C confectioner’s sugar
- 1T of juice from each of the lime, lemon and orange
Directions
Preheat the oven to 325ºF and position a rack in the center of the oven. Lightly grease a 9 inch springform pan with non-stick cooking spray or butter. Note: I didn’t have a springform pan, it was warped and the bottom didn’t seal, so I sprayed a 9 inch cake pan I had with Pam baking spray.
Place the eggs and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer, and with the whisk attachment, beat them on medium speed until they are tripled in volume, fluffy and pale yellow in color.
While the eggs are beating, in a medium bowl combine the flour, polenta, baking powder and salt.
Alternate adding the dry ingredients to the egg mixture with the olive oil. Begin with 1/3 of the dry ingredients, then add half the oil, followed by another 1/3 of dry ingredients, the remaining oil and the remaining dry ingredients, beating after each until it’s incorporated (don’t over beat and don’t forget to stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl while you are doing this).
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake the cake for 25 to 30 minutes. Rotate the cake 180º halfway through the baking time to ensure even browning. The cake is done when it springs back lightly when touched and pulls away from the sides of the pan, and a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Now I had to chuckle to myself at this point in the process because I remembered I used to tease Gina that her oven either ran incredibly hot or mine ran incredibly cold because my baked goods never came out as quickly as hers. I think at 325 this ended up being 40 minutes, give or take but you should start checking at 25 minutes just in case.
Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes then carefully remove (mine just required me gently flipping it onto the wire cooling rack). In some renditions like here on the Babbo website, she merely dusts the cake with powdered sugar when it’s cooled but in the book, she makes a glaze, mixing the confectioners sugar with the 3T juice (adding a bit more drops of water if the glaze doesn’t drip easily from a spoon).
I went the glaze route but note that I only ended up using half of the glaze and because I can never drizzle glaze in a pretty manner, I ended up just brushing it across the top. I think without the glaze, the cake isn’t citrusy enough for my tastes.
And for you Weight Watcher Fans, while Gina says this serves 8 – 10, I went with 16 (all that sugar and olive oil). Without the glaze it’s 9 Smart Points a slice, with the glaze 11 Smart Points. Another idea though which I would like to try was done by Michelle over at Bleeding Espresso. She made it into muffins and increased the moisture content by adding some juice to the batter – both ideas sound good to me!