Hey! Do you know any cake recipes with oranges in them? I was looking for a recipe for orange polenta cake (I’d tried it once at a Carluccio’s years ago), and found this recipe on on the BBC Good Food website. It uses flour, eggs and polenta, however some orange polenta cakes are actually gluten free as they substitute all the flour for polenta ( also know as corn meal ) and ground almonds. This can make the cake quite “heavy” though. Luckily the following recipes include syrup for drizzling, and in one case olive oil, to create a moist orange cake you’ll want to make again and again.

If polenta’s not your thing then you could always look at these orange cake recipe suggestions from Dan Lepard that includes a recipe for orange and walnut cake!

Orange And Polenta Cake

I found this video of a wood-fired oven orange and polenta cake that Jamie Oliver made back in 2012. Again this doesn’t quite get us to gluten-free as Jamie’s recipe uses some flour, though not a lot. Imagine the flavour a wood-fired oven would give your baking. There are more dough recipes than baking ones though as the temperature is much higher in this type of oven. Though very hot to begin with, Jamie Oliver lets the oven cool down to around 180c before baking his cake.

The recipe for orange polenta cake is pretty standard though there are a few variations. In this version it uses:

Pack of softened butter (250g)
Unrefined sugar (250g)

Mix the butter and sugar, beating together.

125g polenta
3 large free range eggs
Heaped tea spoon of baking powder
Pinch of salt
50 grams of flour
Zest of one orange

Mix to a thick batter, it’s that simple!

Add 200g ground almonds, instead of flour (hence the small amount in the recipe)

Placing the cake around centre of the oven, it should bake in around 55 to 60 minutes at 180c.

Syrup for drizzling

In all the recipes I found, they all include orange syrup for drizzling on the cake. Jamie Oliver’s method is very simple using the juice of an orange, sugar and water. The mixture is simmered for 5 minutes then poured over the cake. If you don’t know how to drizzle on a cake, it’s simple enough to user a skewer to make holes in the surface so that the syrup get’s into the cake itself, rather than just sitting on the surface.

In the following recipe, Anna Olson makes a simple syrup, for drizzling, from a half cup of blood orange juice and half a cup of sugar.

Italian Orange Polenta Cake Recipe

The Italian orange polenta cake recipe that Anna Olson makes is a classic recipe that uses polenta and simmered milk mixed together. The mixture is cooled down with a cup of sugar to prevent the 4 eggs that are added from becoming scrambled. Ground almonds add structure, 2 spoons of baking powder help the cake rise and a pinch of cinnamon adds flavour. This cake bakes for 45 minutes.

Finally, in 2017 Nadiya’s British Food Adventure featured an Orange Blossom and Herb Scented Polenta Cake. This polenta cake recipe includes rosemary, thyme and pistachios for a different flavour. Though it’s gluten-free, as one commenter says, make sure your baking powder is also gluten-free. It makes a dense, sticky cake. ( remember I was saying “heavy” earlier? )

180 ml Olive Oil
220g Caster Sugar
3 eggs
Mix in 300g ground almonds
Zest of 4 mandarins
Rosemary
Orange blossom water (3 teaspoons)
150g polenta
1 teaspoon of baking powder

Syrup – mandarin juice, 4 tsp orange blossom honey, 4 sprigs of thyme. Mandarin and thyme work well together because of thymol.

Bake for an hour.

Iced cake with pistachio oil instead of water, with the icing sugar. Add pistachio nibs. Delicious!

BONUS: While searching for other recipes, I found this Orange Polenta Cake recipe that uses Grand Marnier as an ingredient. That sounds super luscious!

Got a recipe you want to share? Have you tried any of these recipes? Leave a comment below and let us know!

Credit: Photo by Dana Nestorova on Unsplash