Vegan Lemon, Raspberry and Coconut Polenta cake

This is a recipe for a very frugal cake made using polenta. Its eggless as well so its also vegan and so in these times of lockdown and shortages this may well be of use to people who normally make cakes using eggs but have not got any. Its pobably useful after Brexit as well since I suspect we will ahve food shortages then!

Just before lockdown we invested in two catering sized bags of polenta with the idea of making chapattis. Well what a disaster they turned out to be! Totally inedible.

We can make decent chapattis using normal wholemeal flour though, so we are now sticking with that. But what to do with all this polenta?

I used BBC food to make some chilli corn bread ( and veganised that as well). You can find the recipe from BBC food but probably also all over the internet in different but  very similar forms.
The corn bread recipe is basically a batter similar to making cakes so I decided to invent a vegan polenta cake. This is a variation on a vegan basic sponge cake that I make regularly.

Oven temperature about 180℃ (the knobs on my cooker have no marks cos they wore off when I used stainless steel cleaner, but its where I set it for anything needing 180℃ and it usually works OK)

For this recipe I used:

Dry igredients
175g of fine polenta
175g of plain flour
 2 tea spoons of bicarbonate of soda
1/2 cup of vanilla sugar - I make my own but a bought sort wuld do or just use ordinary granulated or caster sugar

Wet Ingredients
1 cup of sunflour oil
1 cup of soya milk

Other ingredients
 2 lemons - zest and juice
 1 generous tablespoon of dessicated coconut
A small handfull of fresh home grown raspberries - these are the first of the year that I picked this morning and because its been so dry and only just rained they are quite small but I do not think it will matter how big they are or if they are shop bought. I had about 15-20 small raspberries.

You need a large bowl to mix or a mixer. I used a mixing bowl and a wooden spoon.
Add all dry ingredients together in the bowl (except for the coconut), and mix well to ensure your bicarb is well mixed in. Sieve if you want to or if there are any lumps. Its always best to sieve but to be honest I never bothered.

Make a well in the centre of the dried ingredients and add oil and soya milk and mix well to make a batter like consistency. I beat with a wooden spoon. Add the dessicated coconut and mix in well. Fold in raspberries trying not to break them up.

Now grate the lemon to get the zest ensuring you do not get any pith and add to the mix and mix well in.

Squeeze the juice from both lemons but DO NOT ADD to the mix. The lemon juice reacts with the bicarb in an acid-base reaction to give your carbon dioxide which is what raises the cakes without using eggs. But you have to add it at the very last minute before putting in the oven.
Now you can either make cupcakes in which case get the cases into the tins ready, or you can make a sandwhich type of cake in which case grease your tins well with margerine. Mine were 17cm or 7 inches in diameter. I used two cake tins and also made 3 cupcakes but this will probably vary a bit.

So, when you have you pans greased - you may be more organised than me and have done this already before you started cooking - add the lemon juice and mix in well. Now get those cakes in the oven quick because the acid-base reaction has begun and you want the cake to rise like the cakes people who make using eggs get. Lots of vegan cakes are very heavy this one isn't but it depends on you getting that cake in straight after you add your lemon juice. Ofcourse though do make sure you mix it into the rest of the mix properly.

I reckon about 10-15 minutes using a fan oven and this is done but to check us a scewer - eg one of those wooden ones used for BBQs. If it comesout clean the cake is done. I its sticky then give it a bit longer. If it starts to go too dark stick a bit of foil on the top whilst it finishes cooking.

I never decorated this because it got eaten very quickly but I will try decorating my next one. You could lemon drrizzle or chocolate icing and a bit of jam between sponge layers would also be good. Never mind!
Enjoy your eggless vegan polenta cake!

Bracken