Spiced Chocolate Orange Polenta Cake

Are we ready for some more chocolate after the indulgences of Easter?

I am always looking for a way to use interesting or unusual ingredients. You don’t see polenta around too much, but I really like using it in baking. It is kind of coarse and I like the very subtle crunch that it gives to baked goods. I am a fan.

Now, real talk, I poured the batter for this into a cake tin that was way too small and it never would have cooked. So I removed some of the batter for cupcakes, and ended up with a smaller cake than was intended and 6 delicious cupcakes. Still delicious.

This is a good cake. AND it's gluten free! You will enjoy.

Ingredients

• 150g dark chocolate
• 150g ground almonds
• 100g polenta
• 2 tsp ginger
• ½ tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 225g golden caster sugar
• 225g butter
• 3 eggs, separated
• Zest of 1 orange
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar

To finish

• 50g Maya Gold chocolate
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 1/3 cup cocoa
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1-2 tbsp orange juice

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and grease a 20cm cake tin.

Melt the chocolate and allow to cool slightly.

Mix together the almonds, polenta,spices and baking powder.

In a separate bowl, beat together the sugar and butter in a large bowl. Add the egg yolks one at a time then fold through the melted chocolate, vanilla and the orange zest.

Stir through the dry ingredients until you have a smooth batter. Finally, whip the reserved egg whites and fold these through.

Pour into cake tin and bake for 40 minutes. I also got 6 cupcakes out of mine and I baked those for about 20-25 minutes.

Remove from the oven and let cool.

Melt the chocolate and just go ahead and spread that on the top of the cooled cake and allow to set. I would have done a ganache, but I didn’t have any cream.

When that’s set, make the frosting by placing all the rest of the ingredients in a food processor and blitzing. Pipe a little decoration on the cake and cupcakes and serve!