Lemon-Rosemary Polenta Cake

Sunday I decided to try my hand at baking in Europe. I don’t know why I thought it would be so much more complicated than it is in the US, but it wasn’t. Well, not really anyway. You have to convert the measurements, find and weigh the ingredients, take into account the automatic convection in the oven when calculating the cooking time, and work in a tiny kitchen with limited tools…ok, it was a little complicated. Still, as it turns out, baking is baking. I was planning on bringing this cake into the office, so I wanted to make something that would appeal to the Italian gusto - light, not too sweet, not to cloying. I chose a lemon-rosemary polenta cake with lemon-rosemary syrup for my project.

The baking, as I said, went very well. I had already planned to make a half recipe (pictured) to make sure I got the proportions correct and to build my confidence a bit. The first cake came out beautifully but took quite a while to cook (about 40 min). I’ll attribute that to how full the little pan was. By contrast, the full-sized cake cooked relatively quickly (in 37 min), probably because the pan wasn’t nearly as full. It also failed to rise in the middle, which could be due to the fact that I brought the temperature up after the first cake failed to cook. Ah, well, c’est la vie. I’m sure if you try this at home you’ll have a much easier time, after all, your oven will be standard US. This European oven and I are still getting to know each other.

The other major failure with this recipe was the syrup. When I made the syrup as instructed it just came out as sugar water. Delicious, lemon and rosemary scented sugar water, but not something I was going to put on a cake. I reheated it and kept adding sugar until it started to thicken a bit, then I set it aside again to cool. Well of course then when it cooled it was much too thick, and even adding the lemon juice didn’t stop it from crystallizing on the top of the cake. Since it looks delish, and tastes delish, and probably keeps the moisture in the cake so it will last longer, I don’t see this as too big a negative. Still, the recipe I’ve listed below for the syrup probably isn’t completely reliable. Play around with it and see.

Lemon-Rosemary Polenta Cake
1/2 cup (113 g) melted and cooled butter
1 1/2 cup (192 g) flour
2 tsp. (10 g) baking powder
1 tsp (5 g) salt
3/4 (112 g) Polenta
4 eggs
3/4 cup (150 g) white sugar
Zest of 1 1/2 lemons
2 tsp. finely chopped rosemary

Preheat the oven to 360 degrees F (or 182 C). Butter and flour a 9 inch cake pan.
Melt butter and set aside to cool. Combine dry ingredients. Mix eggs and sugar until light and fluffy (3-4 minutes). Add lemon zest and rosemary and mix until combined. Add 1/3 the dry ingredients and mix until just combined, then add 1/2 the butter. Continue until all the ingredients are just combined. Pour into the cake pan and cook for 35-40 minutes, until the sides come away from the pan and a knife in the middle comes out clean. The top should be golden brown, and spring back a bit when you touch it.

Lemon-Rosemary Syrup
1/2 cup (118 g/125 ml) water 
1/3 cup (67 g) white sugar
Rosemary, zest of 1 lemon, juice of 1 lemon

Dissolve the sugar in the water in a saucepan over the stove. After the sugar is completely dissolved, add the lemon zest and the rosemary. Bring to a boil and set aside for 15 minutes before straining. Add the lemon juice before serving. Spoon over the cake (still in the pan) after it has cooled for 10 minutes.
Serve with whipped cream or plain! Fruit would be good as well, if you are so inclined. Actually this wouldn’t be too bad with fruit cooked in it either.