Rhubarb, Almond and Polenta Cake (gluten free)

It's been a whole year since I last posted on here, and I feel rather guilty about that. My absence can be partly blamed on my having to change the way I cook and eat thanks to IBS. I've had to cut out gluten and dairy and thus lots of my favourite foods, but over the past year I've gradually tested things out to the point that I now know I can tolerate a small amount of spelt or rye bread, can occasionally treat myself to things made with plain flour (as opposed to strong bread flours) like pastry and cakes and - perhaps there is a god - halloumi. A lot of avocados have been consumed, gluten-free breads have been tasted and rejected while gluten free pasta has been embraced whole-heartedly. Rice has been eaten in all its myriad forms and has always been scrumptious. My new favourite thing is polenta, which I'll talk about more some other time, because the other reason for my absence is also the other reason for this recipe: we bought a house and got a new allotment which, aside from an abundance of bind weed and couch grass is also rich in rhubarb.

I love me some rhubarb. I've yet to make a savoury dish from it, though I've seen plenty of good recipes, but aside from the obvious crumbles it also makes excellent ice-cream and fool and is delicious roasted with brown sugar and served with a meringue nest and some frozen yoghurt. The Guardian has a great sounding recipe for rhubarb tiramisu in their '10 Best...' collection that I really need to try, but a good old cake is often all you really need, and the texture of the polenta makes this seem lighter but way moister than your average sponge. I don't think I made this recipe up entirely, I'm sure it's come together from lots of different sources, and those quantities probably came from somewhere other than my little noggin - but I'll be damned if I can remember where. But enough piffle, here it is, rhubarb polenta cake, with ground almonds for extra moistness and lemon zest to enhance the all round rhubarbiness.* You don't have to use the xanthan gum if you don't want to, but it does help bind things together a little better than just the eggs alone. If you do want to use it and you've never heard of it before, it's a powder that you'll find in a small tub in the free-from section of supermarkets or health food shops.
*definitely not a word

Rhubarb, Almond and Polenta cake

For the rhubarb
350g rhubarb, chopped into approx 2-4cm chunks
50g soft, light brown sugar

Toss the rhubarb and sugar together in a bowl and leave to marinate for at least 30 minutes.

For the cake
225g caster sugar
225g butter
200g ground almonds
125g polenta
3 eggs
zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp xanthan gum (optional)


Heat oven to 180C, and line a 20cm cake tin with greaseproof paper (I always grease the paper but lots of recipes say to grease the pan, do what you will).
In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar together until creamed then beat the eggs in one at a time with a little of the polenta to help prevent curdling.
Stir in the rest of the polenta, the ground almonds, lemon zest and xanthan gum if using.
Drain the liquid off the rhubarb - this can be retained to use as a drizzle later if you wish - and fold the rhubarb into the cake mixture.
Spoon the mix into your cake tin and bake in the centre of the oven. Check after 40 minutes and if the top looks a little dark cover it with foil, otherwise, replace as it is and cook for another 20 minutes or until a knife inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.
Leave to cool in the tin for at least half an hour before turning out onto a wire rack.

Ciambella con Frutta Secca, or Mummy Thorne's Little Cakes Recipe

We're back in the UK now, currently homeless but staying with Rowan's parents in Rutland while we find a place to live in Nottingham. We visited my parents in the Forest of Dean at the weekend, and spent Sunday meandering around Malvern and eating a tasty pub lunch at British Camp, followed by a tentative rummage through the pile of furniture and crap we stored in their barn to find our cooler weather clothes, taking great care not to disturb the bat guano scattered all over the protective dust sheets.

 My mum almost always has a batch of her delicious fruit cake-style fairy cakes ready for us when we visit. In our family they're affectionately known as Little Cakes to distinguish them from mum's normal-sized fruit cakes (she makes an excellent fruit cake too). They're incredibly simple, and to me they taste comfortingly of home; memories of lazy Sunday evenings spent watching Ski Sunday and the Antiques Roadshow, eating sandwiches made from leftover roast, mum's coleslaw and homemade pickled onions, with Little Cakes for pudding. I used her recipe while we were in Italy to make a very tasty ciambella - a sort of Italian Bundt cake - during a big thunderstorm. I adapted it a little to make it a bit more ciambella-y (I added marsala), but otherwise this is all my mum's recipe, and it worked just as well for ciambella as for fairy cakes.

                                                                                                                    (c) Becca Thorne 2014

This makes either one ciambella or approximately 12 little cakes. It's in ounces, as that's how mum gave it to me (she's been making these a long time), and I used this page to convert the original quantities to cups as I had no scales.

Ingredients
8oz plain flour
6oz butter
4oz sugar
2 eggs
2tsp baking powder
8oz dried mixed fruit/sultanas
A little milk - dairy or non-dairy
Optional: a generous glass of marsala or the tasty liquid of your choice - brandy, whisky, amaretto, sherry or Earl Grey tea would all work well - plus just enough apple or orange juice to cover the dried fruit in a small mixing bowl. Omit the milk if you do this.

Preheat the oven to 180C.

If using, soak the fruit in the marsala and juice for 10-15 minutes.

Lightly grease your ciambella pan, or line your fairy cake moulds with cake papers.
Cream the butter and sugar together until fairly smooth. Using a wooden spoon, beat in the eggs one at a time, adding a tablespoon or so of flour with each to prevent curdling.
Fold in the rest of the flour and the baking powder. If the mixture feels a little stiff or dry, add either a little milk or, if using, the soaking liquid from the fruit, to loosen it up to a good dropping consistency. Fold in the fruit.
Spoon the mixture into your pan or papers. If making individual cakes, sprinkle with a little demerera sugar. Bake in the centre of your oven for 15-20 mins until golden and a clean, sharp knife inserted into the middle of a cake comes out clean.
Allow to cool in the pan for a couple of minutes, then remove onto a wire rack to cool fully. Keeps well in an airtight box for several days.