Leith's cookery course. Day one: Citrus polenta cake

Today I started a cookery course at Leith's School of Food and Wine in Hammersmith. It's a 3-day course entitled Elegant Entertaining. I was so excited to be there that I almost cried several times during the morning demonstration! If you know me, you know that it's not unusual for me to feel like that, but it does indicate my pure joy at cooking beautiful food. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, which will be a whole day of cooking (today was half demonstration and half cooking). First we made this lemon poppy polenta gluten-free wonderfully moist cake. Then we made pasta! I expect I'll go on about that more later. I am now going to buy a pasta machine. And a MagiMix.

Citrus polenta cake
Adapted from Leith's Baking Bible


3 eggs
130ml sunflower oil
130g caster sugar
zest of one orange
zest of one lemon
105g ground almonds
75g polenta
3/4 tsp gluten-free baking powder
1 1/2 tbsps poppy seeds


For the syrup:
Juice of one orange and one lemon
55g caster sugar


Heat the oven to 180 C. Grease a 23cm cake tin and place a disc of greased greaseproof paper in the base.

Beat the egg yolks, oil, 110g of the caster sugar (or just reserve about a tablespoon from the original 130g sugar) and the orange and lemon zest until smooth. Add the ground almonds, polenta, baking powder and poppy seeds to the egg mixture. Fold to combine.

Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks in a clean bowl then beat in the remaining caster sugar. Fold into the cake mixture. Turn into the prepared tin and bake in the centre of the oven for 35–40 minutes. A wooden cocktail stick inserted into the centre should come out clean when the cake is cooked.

Cool the cake in the tin while making the syrup. Place the orange and lemon juice in a small saucepan with the caster sugar over a low heat. Heat until the sugar dissolves then bring the mixture to the boil. Allow to cool for 10 minutes.

Pierce the cake all over the top and pour the syrup into the holes. Leave to settle for a few minutes before turning out of the tine and up the other way (so the holes are now on the bottom). If you wish, you could make more syrup to drizzle over the top.

It's really good with creme fraiche and raspberries.