Pine & Polenta Cake with Creme Fraiche & Grilled Apricots.

A rustic, sun-drenched cake with a golden crumb and pine crust.

In another life, I spent a few years working in a bakery. Whilst mainly surrounded by loaves of bread, I also picked up a few key skills for cake making, and as it’s my birthday, I thought I’d mark the occasion this year by sharing a recipe I used to make my own pine and polenta birthday cake.

I’m not a huge fan of icing, so I opted to make something more humble and simple. As it happens, the very first of our undercover apricots are just about ripe enough in time for my batch of 2024 mugolio syrup to fully mature. To pay homage to the Dolomite origins of this pine syrup, I felt polenta would make for a perfect marriage for these two ingredients, tying everything together with a bit of Northern Italian flare.

Subtle, piney, fluffy, and exquisitely rustic. We ate it all at the farm with a dollop of creme fraiche and a cup of tea and coffee, sat in the shade on a sunny afternoon. Apart from Will, who doesn’t like creme fraiche, and ate it by the handful like the barbarian he is.

Every time I look at this photo I think it looks like really nice eggs on toast

In case you missed it, you can read all about how to make your own in the previous article (released yesterday). It’s a remarkably simple, beginner friendly technique.

Filed Under: Things That Smell Like Pines

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If you’d like to have a go at this recipe but can’t wait a year or so for your own pine syrup to be ready, substitute it for an extra 50g of sugar in the sponge itself, and make a citrus glaze for the topping instead. To do this, mix 100ml of lemon or orange juice with 100g of sugar and boil them on the hob for 5 minutes before pouring it over the freshly baked cake.

Serves: 8–10
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

250g unsalted butter, softened
200g demerera sugar
50ml mugolio (pine syrup)
4 large eggs, kindly donated by our chickens
140g fine polenta
200g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
Juice of 1 lemon

For the glaze:
120ml of mugolio pine syrup

Method:

1. Cream the softened butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs one at a time, ensuring each is fully incorporated before adding the next. Continue to beat the mixture until it’s light and airy.
   

2. In a separate bowl, combine the polenta, flour, and baking powder. Gradually fold the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Stir in the pine syrup.
   

3. Set aside for 30 minutes whilst you preheat the oven to 160°C (140°C fan/gas 3). Line a 23cm round cake tin with baking parchment. Waiting gives coarse meals like polenta and ground almond time to absorb the liquid and produces a far fluffier cake.
   

4. After 30 minutes, mix the lemon juice into the cake batter and pour the whole lot into the prepared tin, smoothing the top, then bake for 1 hour, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Or, in my case, a golden chop stick gifted to me by Kimmy (it’s perfect for testing cakes).
   

5. Once the cake is baked,whilst still warm, drizzle and brush the top with pine syrup, allowing it to soak in. Keep it in the tin for 20 minutes before moving it to a wire rack to cool. This gives any syrup that runs off the top a chance to soak into the sides and base of the cake instead.
   

   

To Serve: This cake pairs beautifully with a dollop of crème fraîche or a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and a halved, grilled apricot per slice.

This truly is a subtly refined cake. The kind your grandmother’s grandmother would have made without checking a recipe. I hope it brings you as much joy as it has me and the team.

See you next week,
Sam