Polenta Cake from “The New Vegan”

As a former ballet teacher and an author myself, I’m quite demanding and nitpicky about cookbooks. I usually fill my books with little pieces of paper as a bookmark to signal really interesting recipes, and I assure you that this one has a ton of them. I often spend dozens of minutes leafing through them before deciding if they’re really worthy. And often they’re too basic for me or they use ingredients almost impossible to find but in well-stocked asian/african/ecc stores. Aine‘s cookbook (Usa version/Uk version) is on another level. The recipes are easy but original and interesting – a result so hard to get – often prepared with not many ingredients, most of which you probably already have in your pantry.

Every chapter is opened by a table of contents with beautiful illustrations, the layout of the pages and the font are just perfect and the food looks and sounds delicious. Among the (many) recipes I want to try asap : Stovetop beans with a twist (page 42), Adzuki bean casserole (p 119) and Carrot and walnut cake (p 139).

This cake is simple to make, require 5 minutes of work and the frosting only requires blending. And it’s freaking delicious. The recipe in the book calls for a 6″ inch cake pan and a 30-35 baking time, but when I noticed that the cake was still raw, I understood something was off, especially when my cake turned out way taller than hers! I asked Aine and we realized that the correct measurement would be 7″ – apparently an American publisher’s oversight – but the cake turned out amazing anyway, I only had to keep it in the oven for a longer time.

THE RECIPE

You’ll end up with some extra frosting that you can serve as “side” or simply eat it with a spoon because it’s freaking delicious and creamy. As polenta, I used a type called taragna, which is a blend of corn and buckwheat (35%) peculiar to a region in Northern Italy. She uses agave nectar but I prefer using maple syrup because of the different metabolization during the digestion, so I bought a light colored one for the frosting. FYI, the orange juice for the cake was 1/2 cup (120 ml). She uses soy yogurt, but the plain unsweetened kind I find here in California kinda sucks.

[ for 10-12 servings ]