Blackberry and Lime Polenta Cake
The hedgerows where I live are full of ripe blackberries at the moment and I have discovered new places to pick them not too far from home. I didn’t manage to do any fruit picking this year as I found myself overwhelmed by work and moving house, amongst other things, and my jam cupboard is looking very sorry for itself. I find fruit picking very therapeutic and having missed out on picking raspberries, blackcurrants, strawberries and gooseberries, am taking the opportunity to pick blackberries whenever I can.
Apart from blackberry jam and vodka, there are only so many apple and blackberry crumbles you can make so I have been looking for other ideas. Polenta cake makes a refreshing change from a Victoria sponge and the addition of lime and blackberries adds a subtle flavour. It is also gluten-free.
It’s a very easy recipe and I love the way the cake looks: rustic and sophisticated all at the same time, somehow. I made mine without any baking powder as I think it should be a dense cake: it gets enough rise from the eggs and creaming the butter and sugar together. Baking powder would give it more the texture of a sponge and that wasn’t what I was looking for. This makes a shallow 8″ cake.
Recipe
Ingredients
135g butter
135g sugar
2 eggs
125g ground almonds
75g polenta
Zest and juice of a lime
100-150g blackberries
Method
Grease, and line the base of, an 8″ loose-based cake tin. Set the oven to 180ºC.
Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
Add the eggs, one at a time and mix well.
Add the zest and juice of the lime and mix again.
Fold in the flour and polenta and make sure it is all well combined.
Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin and gently level.
Sprinkle the blackberries over the top.
Ready to bake
Bake for around 30-40 minutes, until the cake is risen and brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Allow to cool in the tin for a while:
Allow to cool in the tin
Carefully remove from the tin and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.
Happy Blackberrying!
Blackberry and Lime Polenta Cake
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Categories: Baking, Cakes, Desserts, Foraging, Fruit, Fruit picking, gluten free baking, Recipes, Using Alternatives
lovinghomemade 
What a beautiful bake. Seriously impressed!
This looks so good! Love the fact that it is gluten free too.
It looks very lovely! I have not tried baking cakes with polenta. but this is making me convinced. Gorgeous blackberries!
i already tried a polenta cake (Nigella’s recipe) but it was waaaay to greasy. Yours look perfect!
Thank you very much!
At the fifth stage of the method you are instructed to fold in the flour and polenta. Yet flour is not listed in the ingredients. What type of flour and how much? When do you add the ground almonds ?
Hi, sorry for any confusion – ground almonds have recently also become known as almond flour so when I wrote flour I should have put ground almonds as per the ingredients list (or vice versa). Hope that makes it clearer and thank you for your question.