This Valentine, husband gifted an OTG. So now no excuse for not baking, I mean serious baking.
Since then my experiment with the OTG is going on full swing. Besides the regular cake with all purpose flour aka Maida, I am trying to find out if this chief ingredient of cake can be replaced with some other flours like whole wheat ( atta ), semolina ( suji ), ragi (nachni) etc. In such attempts, I came across a recipe by none other than Nigella Lawson about a "Lemon Polenta Cake". Here she uses Cornmeal or Polenta and butter both of which I replaced to what I had in my kitchen and of course for health reasons. ( Both I and my husband are trying to avoid butter as much as we can). I will call it Lemon Semolina Cake.
Here's my version of the Lemon Semolina Cake:
Ingredients for the Cake
One small cup of Semolina / Suji
Same cup full of refined oil; I used Rice bran oil.
Half a cup castor sugar or as per your taste
One teaspoon full of baking powder
2 eggs
Half a cup of milk
Zest of one lemon. Keep the lemon aside as we will need the juice for the syrup.
Few almonds to garnish
Mix all the dry ingredients together.
Beat in the eggs and oil first in a bowl.
Add it to the dry mixture, add the cup of milk and beat thoroughly so that it turns to a smooth paste. Of course it will not be as smooth as maida mixture. But smooth enough. Leave the batter for 10 minutes.
In the mean time pre heat the oven in 180C . Now transfer the batter into the greased baking tin. Bake it for 40 minutes at 180C. When you try putting in a fork in the middle and it comes clean, the cake is done. Also the cake will start to shrink from sides and come out of the walls of the tin when it is done. Leave it inside the tin while we make the syrup.
For the Syrup
Boil the juice of the lemon whose zest we used in the cake. Add a spoon full of castor sugar to it.
Prick the cake all over with a fork or the cake tester. But go very slow while you do that because it may lead to disaster since the cake is still hot. Now pour the syrup all over the cake. Let the cake get soaked in the syrup while it cools down.
Take it out of the tin and enjoy.
Trust me it tastes equally good like an all purpose flour cake.
Since then my experiment with the OTG is going on full swing. Besides the regular cake with all purpose flour aka Maida, I am trying to find out if this chief ingredient of cake can be replaced with some other flours like whole wheat ( atta ), semolina ( suji ), ragi (nachni) etc. In such attempts, I came across a recipe by none other than Nigella Lawson about a "Lemon Polenta Cake". Here she uses Cornmeal or Polenta and butter both of which I replaced to what I had in my kitchen and of course for health reasons. ( Both I and my husband are trying to avoid butter as much as we can). I will call it Lemon Semolina Cake.
Here's my version of the Lemon Semolina Cake:
Ingredients for the Cake
One small cup of Semolina / Suji
Same cup full of refined oil; I used Rice bran oil.
Half a cup castor sugar or as per your taste
One teaspoon full of baking powder
2 eggs
Half a cup of milk
Zest of one lemon. Keep the lemon aside as we will need the juice for the syrup.
Few almonds to garnish
Mix all the dry ingredients together.
Beat in the eggs and oil first in a bowl.
Add it to the dry mixture, add the cup of milk and beat thoroughly so that it turns to a smooth paste. Of course it will not be as smooth as maida mixture. But smooth enough. Leave the batter for 10 minutes.
In the mean time pre heat the oven in 180C . Now transfer the batter into the greased baking tin. Bake it for 40 minutes at 180C. When you try putting in a fork in the middle and it comes clean, the cake is done. Also the cake will start to shrink from sides and come out of the walls of the tin when it is done. Leave it inside the tin while we make the syrup.
For the Syrup
Boil the juice of the lemon whose zest we used in the cake. Add a spoon full of castor sugar to it.
Prick the cake all over with a fork or the cake tester. But go very slow while you do that because it may lead to disaster since the cake is still hot. Now pour the syrup all over the cake. Let the cake get soaked in the syrup while it cools down.
Take it out of the tin and enjoy.
Trust me it tastes equally good like an all purpose flour cake.
