The Best Polenta Orange Cake

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Amazing polenta orange cake! It is soaked with syrup, so soft, moist, and delicious! The best sweet polenta cake I have ever had!

This polenta orange cake (also-known-as malai dulce – sweet cornmeal – in Romanian) is the end of a long quest after a sweet and delicious recipe made with polenta. I’ve made many polenta cakes over the years, searching for the one I would like, the one I imagined so many times when reading some recipes. And this is it – the best orange and polenta cake recipe! Who says polenta is only for making savory dishes?

And if you would like to check more orange dessert recipes, have a look at the Orange Drizzle Cake, the Orange Tiramisu or the Orange Popsicles.

Why is this the best recipe?

• Texture: The best there is! Soft, moist, no grittiness, although the cornmeal was not cooked before.
• Taste: Incredibly delicious; you can really taste the oranges.
• Super easy to make: Stir the ingredients, bake, make the syrup, and soak the cake with it.
• Potluck cake: Easy to transport and eat without a plate and spoon.

Recipe ingredients

Polenta:

• I used medium cornmeal or polenta with a short cooking time; the instructions on the package indicated 10 minutes of cooking time. Choosing a cornmeal type that doesn’t need to be cooked for a long time helps against the grittiness you will experience if you use coarse cornmeal.
• Not corn flour, which is completely fine and smooth.

Semolina:

• For the same reason, I chose a fine/ soft semolina kind.
• I live in Germany and there are two sorts of semolina here: the coarse/hard one that I use to make dumplings for soup and the fine/soft kind used to make semolina porridge or semolina desserts, for instance.

Oranges:

• It is preferable to use organic ones as you will also need the orange zest. Choose unwaxed oranges, wash them with hot water and dry them well before zesting.
• You can also bake the cake with blood oranges.

Greek yogurt:

• Full-fat creamy yogurt.

Oil:

• A neutral-tasting kind of oil like canola or very mild sunflower oil. Don’t use olive oil or anything else with a pungent taste.

Other ingredients: eggs, sugar, milk, baking powder, vanilla sugar, vanilla extract or vanilla essence, lemon juice, icing sugar.

Recipe steps

Orange polenta cake:

• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius/ 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter a casserole dish, 28×18 cm/ 11×7 inches. Grate zest of one of the whole oranges; you will need about 1 tablespoon of zest or more to taste.
• Dry ingredients: Mix the cornmeal, semolina, baking powder, and grated orange peel in a small bowl. Set aside (1).

• Eggs: Separate the eggs. Beat the egg whites until stiff and set aside. In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks, sugar, vanilla sugar, or vanilla extract and 50 g/ 1.7 oz/ scant ¼ cup of the yogurt until pale and thick (2). Use an electric mixer or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment.

• Add the vegetable oil in a slow stream while beating all the time. Add the rest of the yogurt and beat for about 1 minute. Add the milk and mix shortly (3).
• Slowly add the cornmeal – semolina mixture to the wet ingredients mixing with a regular eggbeater/whisk this time (4).

• Fold in the egg whites carefully (6). Pour the cake batter into the prepared tin (7).
• Bake for about 45 minutes or until the cake is golden and a skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Orange syrup:

• In the meantime, make the syrup.
• Juice the citrus fruit until you have about 100 ml/ ½ cup juice.
• Sieve the orange juice into a small saucepan; add the sugar and the lemon juice. Heat on medium heat. When it starts to boil, remove it immediately, you should have a relatively thin syrup (8).
• Once the polenta orange cake is ready, poke holes all over with a toothpick.
• Pour the syrup all over the top of the cake and let the cake cool completely in the dish (9).

Finish:

• Cut the cake into squares, remove them carefully from the baking dish, place them on a serving plate, and sprinkle with icing sugar.
• Decorate with orange slices if you wish.

Expert tips and FAQ

You might not need all the syrup to soak the polenta orange cake; I had a little leftover, but not much. Use as much as necessary and make sure to soak a bit more around the edges, should they be a little drier than the rest of the polenta dessert.

Recipe FAQ

More polenta recipes:

• How to Cook Basic Polenta or Mamaliga
• Roasted Green Onions (Roasted Scallions)
• Polenta Chicken
• Romanian Polenta Souffle
• Polenta Chips

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