A Spoonful of Sugar

Lately, I've taken to menu planning as a means of (a) reducing food wastage and (b) ensuring that I keep up my enthusiasm and love of cooking. It's working on both counts, I must admit, and I get a real kick out of filling up the fridge at the beginning of the week and slowly working my way through all the goodies until the shelves are bare once more. It can feel a little restrictive, so I've decided to let my occasional urges for spontaneity manifest in the form of impromptu cake baking.

Initially I was thinking that I'd make some sort of spiced butternut squash cake, as we have half a squash waiting patiently to be turned into something fabulous, but somehow I stumbled across a delicious-sounding recipe by Gina DePalma for an apple polenta cake, and that was that. (The butternut squash will most likely become a delicious pasta sauce, if you were at at all curious. 'm sure that it is both thrilled and honoured at the very idea.)

There's a huge buzz in the blogosphere about Gina DePalma at the moment. If you don't know who she is, then don't cower and cringe with shame; I didn't know until earlier today, so I've already done all the cringing that'll be necessary.

Gina, is Mario Batali's Executive Pastry Chef at Babbo in New York. I'm only familiar with Batalli from Iron Chef America--he doesn't get a whole lot of airtime in the United Kingdom unfortunately--but he's always impressed me with his creativity, even when pushed outside his comfort zone by the "secret ingredient." It looks like the rest of his staff are equally as creative and as in love with Italian food as he is.

Earlier this month, Gina published her first book Dolce Italiano which has been received with rave reviews from practically everyone who's read a copy. And this week, five Italy-based food bloggers announced a contest to win a copy and as a bonus, they'll be previewing ten recipes from the book! Now that's my kind of contest.

This cake was incredibly straightforward to put together once I'd worked out all my conversions. As our house is a shrine to Weight Watchers--10 pounds down this month! Although, I have to attribute a few of those to an acute bout of viral gastroenteritis at the beginning of the month--I typically halve cake recipes and then set about lowering the fat content.

I may have mentioned this before, but a handy trick when de-fatting recipes for cakes and desserts is to use three-quarters half-fat butter to the weight of regular butter that the recipe calls for. Half-fat butter contains a high percentage of water to bulk it out, and if you do a straight substitution then the batter (or whatever) will be far too wet and you won't get the texture you're looking for in the finished product.

We couldn't wait for the cake to cool fully--it smelt too damn good!--so I cut a couple of slices and we ate in contemplative silence. The texture was fluffy, but not too crumbly; gently spiced; and a lovely lingering fresh flavour of apple permeates the whole thing. As with all cakes containing polenta, the top crust was lovely and crunchy and gave the cake some great texture as a whole. (I'm really not kidding about the apple lingering on the palate--almost an hour later and I still have a lovely fresh taste at the back of my mouth. Fantastic!)

I suspect that the flavour of the cake would change quite markedly depending on what sort of honey you use. I used Eucalyptus as I can't get enough of its wonderful toffee flavour but at some point I'd love to try some Tuscan chestnut honey.

Dave ate his slice of cake with some low-fat custard and pronounced it to be fabulous. I'd imagine that it would also be great with some maple whipped cream. Apples and maple syrup always make for a happy palate.

Based on this experience and all the positive experiences other food bloggers have had with Dolce Italiano, I've added it to my Amazon wishlist and all I need to do now is wait for Christmas and see if I find it under the tree!