Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Fruity polenta slice

It's pouring rain here today (and the teachers are on strike at school...not such a bad thing since there's nothing worse than doing school pick-up with small children in the rain) so I did some baking this morning.

I'll add a photo later, but I tried out a new recipe I found and made fruity polenta slice. I'm a big fan of polenta in cakes and slices, it adds a lovely crunchy texture to the finished product.

Recipe is as follows:

Ingredients
1 tbsp honey
250ml (1 cup) hot tea
320g (2 cups) mixed dried fruit
180g (1 cup) polenta
250g (1 2/3 cups) self-raising flour
100g (1/2 cup) brown sugar
110g (1/2 cup) caster sugar
200g butter, chopped
1/2 tsp cinnamon
zest of 1 lemon, chopped
2 tbsp lemon juice
3 eggs

Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
Dissolve the honey in the hot tea, pour over the dried fruit and set aside to soak. Allow mixture to cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
Butter a slice tin, line sides and bottom with baking paper and butter lightly.
Combine polenta, flours, sugars, butter and cinnamon. Rub butter into dry ingredients until the mixture has a fine breadcrumb texture.
Add lemon zest, juice and eggs and mix well. Drain the dried fruit thoroughly and add to the mix. Stir until well combined.
Spoon mixture into prepared slice tin and smooth the top.Bake for 30-40 minutes or until set and golden brown. Slice into whatever size you like to serve. It would probably be nice for a dessert with a big dollop of cream on it.

The recipe comes from one of my favourite cookbooks, In the Kitchen, by Allan Campion and Michele Curtis. I think this book has just about every recipe you will ever need in it.

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