This nutty polenta cake is lovely and crumbly. The various nuts in this cake add taste and texture. While autumn is the perfect time of year to use hazelnuts and walnuts, you don’t have to limit yourself to just those. You can use any nuts you like. Just go with what you like best.
For anyone who doesn’t know what polenta is, we’ll start with a food lesson. Polenta is originally poor man’s food from northern Italy. Essentially it’s a mush made from cornflower. You can eat this “as is” but you can also eat it baked or fried.
Polenta is also a very old dish. At was already a staple back in Roman times. Back then, they made polenta from meal made from wheat, rye, chestnut or chickpeas. It was only in the 16th century, after the discovery of the Americas, that corn (maize) became the ingredient of choice.
Making polenta from cornflour is very labour-intensive. It takes up to an hour of careful cooking and constant stirring! It really is no wonder that these days you can buy instant polenta. This is pre-cooked cornmeal and enables you to prepare polenta in just a few minutes. It has a reputation for being not being quite as good as polenta made from normal cornmeal. But honestly, who wants to stir until their arms fall off?
For this polenta cake, you need this kind of instant polenta. It comes in different versions, ranging from coarse to fine. It’s best to use the finest version you can find. Otherwise your cake may turn out more crunchy than you intended.
If you like this recipe, please share it with family and friends or on any of our social media pages. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest. If you want to be kept up-to-date on new recipes and posts, you can also follow us on bloglovin‘ or sign up to our newsletter.
Deprecated: strtolower(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/public/sites/www.tinydutchkitchen.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-ultimate-recipe/helpers/models/recipe.php on line 376
Deprecated: strtolower(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/public/sites/www.tinydutchkitchen.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-ultimate-recipe/helpers/models/recipe.php on line 376
Deprecated: strtolower(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/public/sites/www.tinydutchkitchen.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-ultimate-recipe/helpers/models/recipe.php on line 208
| Servings |
|
- 175 g unsalted mixed nuts walnuts, hazelnuts, cashew nuts, almonds....
- 2 tbsp brown sugar
- 150 ml sunflower oil or another mild tasting oil
- 100 g caster sugar
- 3 eggs
- 120 g cornflour for polenta (fine)
- 100 g flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 90 ml orange juice
Ingredients
|
|
- Grease a baking tin, then distribute the brown sugar evenly across the bottom of the tin.
- Roughly chop up the nuts. If you use a food-processor for this, make sure to not process the nuts into a powder! Set aside for now.
- In a mixer-bowl, mix the wet ingredients: oil, sugar and eggs.
- In a separate bowl, combine the polenta, flour and baking powder. Add this, a bit at a time, to the wet ingredients.
- Finally add the orange juice. Mix until everything is well combined.
- By hand, stir the chopped nuts through the batter. Then pour the batter into the baking tin.
- Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180°C (350°F) for 45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
- After taking your cake out of the oven, place onto a wire rack for about 10 minutes. Then remove the mould, by putting a plate upside-down on the cake and then turning the cake over.
- Serve the cake with the brown sugar layer facing up.
