Good evening my lovelies and a Happy Mothers Day to you all! I hope that you are all spoiling your Mother's rotten with lot's of lovely treats and goodies. I have had an absolutely perfect weekend with my gorgeous Mum it has been total heaven to have Mother and Daughter time together.
I love to bake. Fact. So I thought I would bake my Mum a cake for Mother's Day. I have recently been really enjoying experimenting with polenta. Last year I made a Lemon, Honey and Pistachio Polenta cake which my Mum really enjoyed so I thought I would treat her to a polenta cake for Mother's Day. My Mum absolutely adores ginger so I thought I would try incorporating it into the cake. The cake is essentially ginger and polenta with a refreshing lemon buttercream icing in the filling and lemon glace icing on top. I think lemon is bright, refreshing and very spring like. The cake is overflowing with ginger spices, packed full of stem ginger and oozing in ginger syrup; I don't think I could have packed more ginger into this little beauty if I tried. I baked the cake as a sandwich cake so I could make a buttercream filling but you could bake the cake as one cake with just a simple glace icing on top. The world is your oyster. I loved baking this cake and the house smelt really refreshing whilst the cake was baking.
Ingredients
125g unsalted butter
65g caster sugar
70g golden syrup
3 large eggs
125g ground almonds
90g polenta
1/2tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground ginger
150g stem ginger - plus some of the ginger syrup
Buttercream:
25g unsalted butter
250g icing sugar
lemon juice of 1 lemon
lemon rind of 1 lemon
Glace icing:
lemon juice of 1 lemon
250g icing sugar
Method
1) Grease and line two 20cm sandwich cake tins and preheat your oven to 180°C/160°Fan
2) Cream your butter, sugar and syrups together
3) Beat in your eggs one at a time - the mixture may curdle but this will all be resurrected when you add the dry ingredients
4) Fold in your ground almonds, polenta, baking powder and ground ginger using a large metal spoon
5) Dice your gorgeous stem ginger chunks, this doesn't need to be precise but I recon mine may have been about 0.5cm cubes. Once chopped, fold your stem ginger cubes into the mixture
6) Evenly divide your cake mixture into the two cake tins and bake for 25 minutes. Once baked a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake will be removed clean and the cake will also spring back when you gently press the centre. If you baked the cake as one large cake it will take longer to bake. As I have never baked the cake as one before I don't know exactly how long this would take but I would recommend trying around 45 minutes. I'm a home baker and I never use a timer I try to judge by eye when bakes are baked
7) Leave the cakes to cool for approximately 10 minutes in the tin before removing the cakes from the tin and leaving on a wire wrack to cool
8) Once cool, prick both of the cakes all over approximately 3/4 of the way through the cake with a skewer. I then used a teaspoon to drizzle ginger syrup all over each cake. You can use as much syrup as you like here, I think the amount I used was in proportion to the stem ginger that was removed from the jar. This will help to keep the cakes moist whilst infusing the cakes with the warmth of the ginger
9) Whilst the cakes are cooling you can start to make a buttercream filling. Beat your butter and lemon rind together using a wooden spoon
10) Add half of the lemon juice and gradually beat in your icing sugar. Once you have used half of the icing sugar add the remaining lemon juice and continue to beat in the remaining icing sugar
11) Evenly spread the buttercream over one of the cakes using a level spatula and sandwich the two cakes together
12) You can then make your glace icing which is a similar process to the buttercream icing. Gradually beat in your icing sugar to your lemon juice - easy
13) Using a spatula evenly spread the glace icing over the top of the cake. I then decorated the cake with some sugar decorations of daisies and a butterfly but you can get as creative as you like or just keep it simple and sophisticated
Thank you for reading this blog post. Although I made this cake for Mother's Day the cake doesn't have to be restricted just for Mother's Day. I would love to know in the comments how you have spoilt your lovely Mummies. I have had a lovely weekend with mine - soppy post warning - but I honestly couldn't get by without mine she has always been my rock so I hope she has felt special and treated this weekend as she really deserves it.
XXX
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