Apple & Fig Polenta Cake
We live in an old apple orchard, and this year the crop is really good. I have been eyeing recipes for polenta cakes, but I find a lot of polenta has a texture more suited to grits than to cake. DeLallo, however, makes an Instant Polenta that is ground very fine, and that seemed more suitable for cake making, so I thought I would give it a whirl. The timing also coincided with the second harvest of figs, a favorite fruit of mine, so I thought I would incorporate some of those too.
I think the old time polenta cakes must have been invented in part to stretch your ingredients, because they use bread crumbs in addition to the polenta, kind of a cross between a cake and a bread pudding. Last time I was at the DeLallo store, I bought a loaf of the wonderful Talonica bread they bake there, and after eating the first half of the loaf for dinner, I saved the rest for bread crumbs.
It doesn’t take that long to pull this cake together—like all apples dishes, peeling, coring and slicing the apples is probably the most time-consuming part. The main thing, once you have your dry ingredients combined in the first bowl and the wet ones in the second bowl, and your apples and figs sliced and ready to go, is to 1) make sure the batter does not contain any pockets of dry polenta and flour, and 2) work very quickly to assemble the cake, because the instant polenta starts to set up fast, and you want to make sure the cake is in the oven when that happens. You pour a layer of batter, then arrange the apple and fig slices in a pretty circle around the pan, then add the rest of the batter, and sprinkle the top with some toasted pecans. Then, thanks to the instant-ness of the polenta, the cake bakes in only 30 minutes, which makes this a nice last-minute dessert.
Because the cake is going to spend only half the time in the oven that, say, an apple pie would, the apples need to be sliced very thin, so they can cook in time. This works out well, because the slices retain their shape and a tiny bit of crisp to them, which looks very pretty when you slice the cake. And the fresh apple flavor pairs so well with the sweet, subtle corn taste, and the accent of fig, lemon and cinnamon.
And on top of the flavor and fragrance, Apple & Fig Polenta Cake has a wonderful, satisfying texture and heft. The polenta gives it a lovely crumb, and soaks up a ton of moisture from the milk and fruit, so each slice of cake weighs about a pound on your plate, but once you’ve eaten it, it just turns to a nice amber light inside you.
