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Barney's tips for the perfect lemon polenta cake:

  • I always pour the lemon drizzle over the cake while it's still warm from the oven. This helps the syrup soak into the sponge, giving the cake its moist texture and bright citrus flavour.
  • For an extra zesty flavour, I sometimes add the finely grated zest of another lemon or an orange to the batter before baking.
  • This cake keeps particularly well, and I often find it's even better the next day once the flavours have had time to develop. Store it in an airtight container at room temperature for up to three days.
  • If you don’t have golden caster sugar, you can use regular caster sugar instead. The golden variety adds a subtle caramel note, but the cake will still turn out beautifully with either.

Units:

For the drizzle

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Nutrition: per slice

  • kcal590
  • fat31g
  • saturates11g
  • carbs69g
  • sugars51g
  • fibre2g
  • protein10g
  • salt0.6g
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Method

  • step 1

    Butter a 23cm cake tin and heat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Put the lemons in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to the boil, drain, pour over more cold water, then simmer for 1 hr until the lemons are really soft, topping up with more water if you need to. Drain the lemons well. When cool, halve them, remove the pips and blitz in a food processor to a purée.

  • step 2

    Add all the other cake ingredients and carry on blitzing until you have a loose batter. Scrape the batter into the cake tin and bake for 40-50 mins until golden and starting to shrink away from the sides.

  • step 3

    While the cake bakes, make the drizzle by mixing the sugar with the lemon juice. When the cake is ready, remove from the oven and leave to cool a little. While still warm, pour over the drizzle and leave to cool completely. Serve with mascarpone.

Barney Desmazery
As Good Food's longest-serving team member, Barney has written and tested thousands of recipes, worked with many of Britain's top chefs and created videos, live events and masterclasses. After gaining a chef's dipolma and working in restaurants across London, France and Australia, he joined Good Food, where he specialises in sourdough baking, foraging, seasonal ingredients and open-fire cooking. Barney has also published his own cookbook One Dish Four Ways. See Barney’s recipes.
Barney Desmazery chef headshot

Recipe from Good Food magazine, April 2014

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