Dairy/Soya/Gluten-free Honey Polenta Cake with Homemade Fig Jam

Dairy-free, Soya-free, Gluten/Wheat-free

Serves: 10 people

Calories per serving: 650

Jam. This week I made jam for the first time. I had a batch of figs I'd picked up cheap on the market, and my blogging friend Lily had given me some brilliant instructions on how to make any jam at all. So I figured I'd take a crack at it. I was surprised at how easy it was and how delicious it was! SO worth it!

Anyway, once I'd made all this jam I was just itching to make something with it. Honey, I thought... something with honey would go well. So I had a think for a few days, milling a few recipe ideas around in my mind, and I finally settled on some sort of honey polenta cake. I love polenta, but I've yet to use it to make a cake. So I found a basic polenta cake recipe, played around with it a little to make it my own, and walla! And it's an amazing combination! This cake went down a storm at the homeschool group where I take my recipes to be tasted. :)

Of course, other jams would work well too if you don't want to make your own or you can't get hold of fig jam. Strawberry jam would work beautifully. Or you could always just make the jam and eat it on toast, which is how I'm eating the rest of the batch I made! :)

This jam recipe is pretty basic. You just take some fruit, weigh it, add about 40% of the weight of cooking apples, add the equivalent total weight of sugar, and boil until it makes jam. I'll give the specific weights I've used in the recipe, but feel free to tweak it based on how much fruit you have to use.

Ingredients:

Fig jam:

• 485g fresh figs (diced)
• 200g cooking apples (peeled and diced)
• 700g granulated sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

Honey polenta cake:

• 190g non-dairy, non-soya spread
• 110g clear honey
• 60g demerara sugar
• 4 1/2 medium eggs
• 180g ground almonds
• 130g cornmeal (fine-milled polenta/maize flour)
• 3/4 tsp  gluten-free baking powder
• 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• Icing sugar (for dusting)

Method:

Fig jam:

• First, sterilise your jars. Wash them using warm soapy water, dry them, place them on an oven tray (with the lids) and put into an oven at 130C/110C fan/Gas Mark 1 for at least 20 minutes while you make the jam.
• Place a side plate into the fridge to go cold.
• Place all the fruit and sugar into a large pan and boil gently, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Once the sugar has dissolved, leave to simmer gently, stirring occasionally. After 15 minutes put a small amount of the jam onto the cold plate and leave for a couple of minutes. Slide your finger along the jam... if it's setting and has formed a "skin" the jam is ready. If it's not put the plate back in the fridge and continue to simmer, repeating the checking process every 5 minutes. (It took my jam about 40 minutes to set). Once the jam is setting on the cold plate remove it from the heat, stir in the vanilla extract, remove the jars from the oven, and fill them. It's easier if you use a jam funnel (I don't have one so got jam everywhere and just washed the closed jars later).
• Place a waxed disc on top of each jar and leave until cooled a little. Then put on the lids. Walla!

Honey polenta cake:

• Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/Gas Mark 6. Grease and line two 20cm cake pans.
• Place the spread, honey and sugar into a large saucepan and heat gently until the butter has melted.
• Add all the other ingredients and mix thoroughly. Then divide the mix between the cake pans and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes. (This is quite a dense cake... don't expect it to rise very much).
• Remove from the oven and turn the sponges out onto a wire rack to cool.

• If you've made the cake straight away after making the jam, you can just use the still-warm jam straight from the pan. If you've made it after jarring the jam you'll need to warm it a little to make it easier to spread on the cake. Just put it in a saucepan and heat gently. I used about 100g of jam in this cake, but use as much as you like. :)
• Spread the jam on the cooled sponges, put together, and then dust with icing sugar by putting it through a sieve.