Tangelo polenta drizzle cake

Nature is clever. In the middle of winter, when everything is feeling grey and dreary, it offers up citrus. It's enough to just gaze upon the bright colours of lemons and oranges and limes and pink grapefruit and everything in between but the flavour of these fruits works the same way to shock you out of a slump.

This recipe requires a single bowl. If you don't have tangelos, oranges or lemons will do. Containing both oil and yoghurt, the cake keeps well which means you can make it ahead, or have it on hand for the week. But the colour! It's the best. Sweet and softly glowing, it's almost like eating sun.


 
Tangelo polenta drizzle cake
Adapted from a recipe by Julia Busuttil Nishimura, as published in her book Ostro

If you can't find tangelos, this would work equally well with ordinary old oranges or lemons. 




170g caster sugar
3 eggs
1 vanilla pod, split and seeds scraped (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)
150g plain yoghurt
150g extra-virgin olive oil
finely grated zest and juice of 2 tangelos (about 100ml of juice) plus 2-3 tablespoons extra for icing
150g polenta
150g self-raising flour (or 1 cup flour and 2 tsp baking powder)
250g icing (confectioner's) sugar




Preheat oven to 180 deg C and grease and flour a 20cm baking tin.

In a large bowl, whisk together sugar, eggs, vanilla, yoghurt, oil and tangelo zest and juice. Fold in polenta and flour, pour into prepared tin and bake for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Leave to cool in tin for a few minutes, then turn out onto wire rack to cool completely.

Mix icing sugar with just enough of the extra tangelo juice (you may not need all of it) to make a thick but pourable icing. Drizzle over cake, let icing harden, then serve.