Lemon Polenta Cake
Super easy lemon polenta cake with some ricotta cheese for moisture and served with a gorgeous blueberry sauce. The texture is dense, sweet and a welcomed change from the usual sponge cakes. It’s dense, super moist but coarse, with big flavors and a rather unappealing look because it's not a looker unless you drench it in the blueberry sauce, which for me is a must. But you can eat it as a plain snack cake.
I've been meaning to make a polenta cake for the longest time. Instant polenta: this is the one you want because it cooks quickly as it absorbs liquid faster. There is a kind that takes a long time to cook, and it might be too hard when you bite.
Where I live there is also fine cornflour which is not the same. I never used it for this recipe because I do like the rustic bite polenta adds, but I think it can be used.
The list of ingredients talks of a cake that is sweet, wonderfully humid but somewhat coarse. For me, it's all I like in a cake, because I not only love polenta for baking but ricotta and honey as well.
I'm a polenta groupie. It's one of the things that I ate all the time as a kid and loved it. And it pairs so ridiculously well with lemons that I'm really happy to share this recipe with you.
Ingredients:
For lemon polenta cake:
- ¾ cup polenta or yellow cornmeal
- ¾ cup all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup ricotta cheese, at room t°
- ⅓ cup water or buttermilk
- ¾ cup (150g) sugar
- ½ cup honey
- Grated zest of 1 lemon
- 8 Tbs (115g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cold and in small pieces
- 2 large eggs, at room t°
For the blueberry sauce:
- 1 cup blueberries (fresh or frozen)
- ¼ cup lemon juice
- ⅓ cup light brown sugar