Lemon polenta cake with honey ricotta cream

This is another of our easy peasy cake recipes which also happens to please everyone. Serve it as a dessert when entertaining (as we did last Sunday) or for a family meal and if there is any left over it goes well with a nice cup of afternoon tea. It is also a useful recipe if you are wheat intolerant.

serves 6 – 8

• 200g unsalted butter, diced
• 200g cassonade
• 3 large eggs
• Finely grated zest and juice of 2 lemons
• 130g ground hazelnuts
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 70g fine polenta

Icing sugar (for dusting)
A few physalis (Cape gooseberry, optional)

Heat the oven to 170C fan oven/190C electric oven.

place all ingredients in food processor

Place all the ingredients for the cake in the bowl of a food processor and cream together.

line base of tin with parchment

Line the base of 20cm cake tin with removable collar with non-stick baking parchment. Transfer the mixture to the tin smoothing the surface with a spoon, and bake for 35-40 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Run a knife around the sides of the cake, remove the collar and leave to cool. Shortly before serving, dust the cake with icing sugar, and decorate with physalis if wished. You can either serve it off the base, or remove it as you prefer. If you want to lift it off the base onto a plate to serve take care as it breaks very easily. Put a small plate on top, invert, remove base and paper, place serving plate on bottom of cake, turn right way up and remove small plate – voila. It will keep for several days in an airtight container.

Ricotta cream

A cream that has a fraction of the calories and saturated fat of any whipped-up fancy.

• 2 x 250g tubs of ricotta, drained
• 3 tbsp honey

Place the ricotta and honey in a basin and beat with a whisk until smooth. We use half the quantity for 4 people.

recipe by Annie Bell

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