Orange Polenta Cake

This is my transcription from weights to volumes, with a few modifications, of the recipe by Donal Skehan. I made his recipe twice; the first time I used a flaky scale, and had to scale it up for a larger pan, and it was a mess. The second time it worked better, but not perfectly.

Preheat over to 350 F.

Grease the sides of an eight-inch springform pan, and line the base with a round of baking parchment. (NB: Things are oily/greasy enough that you can probably skip this and just grease the bottom, but I'd go with the parchment.)

Either crush and extract seeds from

8 green cardamom pods

and then crush these, or start with

140 cardamom seeds (about 1/2 - 3/4 t)

and either crush them in a mortar and pestle, or grind them in a spice grinder, or simply use

1 t ground cardamom

Add these to a bowl with

2.5c loosely packed almond flour (225 g; 8 oz)

5/8c fine polenta (100g; 3.5 oz)

1.5 tsp baking powder

and whisk together to mix.

In a large bowl, beat

1c + 2T superfine sugar (8 oz by weight)

2 sticks softened butter (I used unsalted)

until mixture is light and pale. If you don't have superfine sugar, you can use granulated sugar and grind it finer in either a spice grinder (better) or a cuisinart with a sharp blade. In my spice grinder, 10 secs turns granulated into powdered sugar, so about 5-7 secs is enough to get to superfine.

Add, one at time

3 eggs

beating after each addition to combine.

Tip in the bowl of dry ingredients and fold with a spatula until just combined. (NB: There's no worry about activating gluten here, so I think that mixing rather than folding would be fine, and might help prevent later problems, but who knows.)

Add

zest of 2 oranges

1 t vanilla extract

and fold further.

Pour this mix (which will be barely liquid) into the prepared springform pan, and place in the middle third of the oven and bake for 40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Remove from over and allow to cool on a wire rack. NB: I "leveled" the contents of the pan with a spatula, and the result was that the center of the cake ended up rising, and then, later, falling, so that the overall shape had a kind of "dent" in the middle. I suspect that not "working" it around to the edges quite so much, i.e., leaving the original batter a little "mounded" in the center might counteract this, but who knows?

While the cake is baking, place

3/4 c orange juice (juice from 2 oranges)

3 T honey

2 t rosewater

in a small saucepan and simmer to dissolve the honey. NB: You could do this with 30-60s heating in the microwave, too..

When cake is mostly cool, pierce holes all over with a wooden skewer and pour half the syrup over it, allowing it to infuse the cake. NB: if I'd done this as directed, I'd have had a puddle of liquid in the "hollow" in the middle of the cake. Instead, I used a hypodermic syringe (no needle: the OJ would clog it!) to inject the liquid in through the skewer holes, which is insane but worked.

At this point, Skehan says to sprinkle the cake with

50 g pistachio nuts, roughly chopped

drizzle with the remaining syrup, and

zest of one orange

and serve in slices with

a little creme fraiche.

I figured that the pistachios would just fall off, and there were way too many of them -- they'd more or less cover the surface of the cake. So my version of this is

Flip the cake over, so that it's now resting on its dented top, and the fairly smooth bottom is showing instead. Boil

about 3T of the syrup

in a saucepan until it reduces and starts to thicken. The idea is for it to be quite thick and sticky whn it cools.

Add

about 1/4c of roughly chopped pistachios

and stir to coat, and then distribute them decoratively over the cake, along with

zest of one orange

and allow to cool. Serve in slices.