Orange Polenta Cake with Ricotta and Honey ice cream

This delightful little orange syrup drenched cake is a hit at any time of day. The fairly sweet cake is matched with a less sweet almost cheescake taste of the ricotta ice cream. Plus the ice cream is simple to make. I married it together with a basil and mint syrup.

Dificulty 2/5

Cake: 

• 200g Butter
• 200g Sugar
• 200g Ground Almonds
• 3 large Eggs
• 1.5 tsp Baking Powder
• 100g Polenta
• Zest of an orange.
• 100g icing sugar, juice of two oranges.

Ice Cream:

• 500g Ricotta
• 150ml Milk
• 150ml Whipping Cream
• 100g Honey
• Zest of a lemon and orange
• 2 Tbsp Orange Liqueur(optional)
• Vanilla Extract.

Basil and Mint Syrup: 

• 100g Sugar + water
• Good handful of mint and Basil.

1) Make the ice cream by putting all the ingredients except the cream in a bowl. Combine and taste, adjust to your liking. Lightly whip the cream and fold into  the mixture. Churn in ice cream maker or transfer to a plastic container in the freezer. By adding the liqueur the freezing point of the ice cream will lower and not go as hard in the freezer.

2) For the cake, cream butter and sugar together. Then add some of the egg and some of the dry ingredients gradually about a third at a time until all are combined. Add the zest. This will make a 23cm round cake, I used an 8in square. Bake at 180c for 40mins. Check after 30.

3) Heat the juice of the two oranges and icing sugar in pan, just to combine and warm. Pour this over the cake once its removed from the oven.

4) For the syrup bring 100g of sugar to the boil with 100ml of water. Put mint into the liquid. The mint will go brown so we are just infusing the flavour into the syrup. Give it 5mins then remove the mint. Add basil and take off the heat. Let cool then puree and pass through a sieve.

Critique: There’s no such thing as a bad cake, but the combination of both cake and ice cream balanced so well I could just keep eating the entire cake. The cake while it had syrup poured on it, part of the cake was still fresh and crumbly.