Recipe: Lime and Coconut Polenta Cake (Vegan, Gluten Free)

It's Christian Aid Week this week, and my church held a bake sale to raise money for their valuable work - they work to end poverty across the world by partnering with local organisations who are best placed to help in their communities (regardless of religion, creed or colour).

I've been busy with crochet for a few weeks but I can never resist the opportunity to bake! I made some regular red velvet cupcakes, but I thought it would be nice to make something egg, dairy and gluten free too because that way, everyone can have cake that wants it.

I wasn't sure I wanted to make cupcakes (not least because there's a limit to the number I can transport) but mini loaves seemed perfect - they're the right size to share, and it's easy to make several.

Last year I discovered polenta cakes, and I really like their texture and how they don't have any hint of grittiness that gluten free cakes can sometimes have. But the recipes I had tried up to now had many, many eggs in. I had some flavours in mind when I found this recipe for Flour-free Lemon & Blueberry Polenta Cake. I don't really like blueberries very much, but it seemed like a good place to start. 

The finished cake was very moist and a bit crumbly. I was pleased how light the texture was, not at all dense, and the lime and coconut flavours came through really nicely.

Ingredients

I doubled the original recipe I adapted this from to make five mini loaves. Half of this would fit one 2lb loaf tin.

Cake

• 200g sugar
• 200g vegan margarine (eg. vitalite)
• 4tsp ground flaxseed
• 8tbsp/120ml water
• 180g almond meal, divided
• 2 tablespoons coconut flour
• 180g polenta (corn meal)
• 2 tsps baking powder
• 2 lemons, zest + juice
• 2 limes, zest + juice
• 200g coconut yoghurt (or coconut flavour soy yoghurt, or other non-dairy yoghurt + a few drops coconut flavouring)

Glaze

• Juice of a lime
• 50g sugar

Coconut icing

• 2 limes, zest + juice
• 200 - 225g icing/powdered sugar, sifted
• 50g desiccated coconut

Method

Cake

Preheat the oven to 170°C (for mini loaves - the original recipe suggests 180°C for one big loaf) and grease/line your tin(s).

Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer if you have one, or with electric beaters if not.

In a small bowl, use a fork to whisk together the flaxseed and water until it thickens, then add 2 tbsp of the almond meal and whisk until it thickens some more. Add the flaxseed mix to the creamed butter and sugar, and mix until combined.

Sieve the remaining dry ingredients (coconut flour, polenta, almond meal and baking powder) together to mix them thoroughly. It doesn't matter if some of the almond meal doesn't make it through the sieve. Add these to the rest of the mixture along with the lime and lemon juice and zest, and mix until combined.

Finally, add the coconut yoghurt (or yoghurt and coconut flavouring) and mix on slow until combined.

Bake in the centre of the oven for 30mins (45mins for a large loaf) until a tester comes out clean and the cakes have pulled slightly away from the edge of the tin.

Glaze

In a small microwave safe bowl, mix the lime juice and the sugar. Microwave on high for 20 seconds at a time until sugar dissolves with a little stirring.

While they're still warm, prick holes all over the cakes and pour the glaze over.

Icing
Mix the lime juice and icing sugar together, until smooth. You may need to use more or less sugar depending on what consistency you like for your icing and how juicy your limes are. Mix in the dessicated coconut, and ice cakes. Sprinkle the lemon zest on top of the cakes to decorate.

Enjoy!

What I baked: Gluten-free, Vegan, Coconut Sugar Cake

I love baking, but I have a lot of friends who can't have regular cakes for whatever reason. I thought it would be a good idea to blog my attempts at gluten, egg and/or dairy free baking so I can remember what worked and what didn't, and maybe help someone else out.

My friend Emily and I thought it would be nice to bake a Simnel cake for our flute group practice this week. She can't have gluten, dairy, or (in my view) worst of all, chocolate, and another girl in the group is vegan and is currently not allowed to have sugar except coconut sugar.

This was a challenge! I checked with our sugar-free friend and she wasn't even allowed to have dried fruit. So a regular Simnel cake was out, and we thought we would bake a spice cake instead.

I got coconut sugar online, though it's the sort of thing you can get at health food shops. It tastes like dark brown sugar, almost like treacle. My husband thinks he can taste a hint of coconut in it but I can't really.


I searched for recipes and found this one for Chai Spice Cake with Vanilla Bean Buttercream from Veggie and the Beast. I liked that it called for raw sugar, because I thought the coconut sugar wouldn't be so different.

We only made the cake, not the icing. We had to make a few substitutions:

• Regular almond milk for vanilla (because the vanilla kind has sugar), 
• 3 cups less 6 tbsps Dove Farms Gluten Free Plain flour, 6 tbsps cornflour and 1 1/2 tsps xanthan gum all sieved together a couple of times for the cake flour (you can't get normal cake flour in the UK, but 1 cup plain flour less 2 tbsps with 2 tbsps cornflour is the substitution I would normally use)
• coconut sugar for raw sugar
• vegetable oil for canola oil (another ingredient you can't get in the UK)

Emily and I followed the directions as written. I make American recipes I find on the Internet quite frequently so I have a set of cup measures. I can't express how much easier it is to use them than to convert a recipe into weights. They aren't expensive and you can get them online or in shops like John Lewis.

I was able to powder the sugar to an extent in the food processor, but not all that well. I also had to hand grind some cardamom seeds, which turned out to be much harder work than I anticipated! I baked the cakes in my oven 175°C (350°F) for about 30 mins, but I swapped shelves half way round so that both cakes had the chance to cook the same.

I confess I was a little nonplussed about how they came out initially! The surface cooked before the mixture had a chance to spread out, so they were all lumpy. I sent this picture to my friend Myshelle who runs Mamma that Makes and she suggested cutting round a plate placed over the cake to make it more circular when they were cool.

Cutting round a plate worked really well - it's the sort of thing I wish I'd thought of by myself. The cakes were still uneven but they were much better. I debated cutting the tops flat too but decided I'd rather have a bigger cake - my flute group friends would forgive me for it not looking perfect!

I tried a second time to powder the coconut sugar in the foodprocessor, thinking that it might work better with less sugar. It didn't! But the blender on the other hand was a different story- it powdered perfectly in about 20 seconds, though I gave it a second 20 seconds just to be sure.

I made a water icing filling for the cake, mixing water into the powdered coconut sugar until it was a thick paste. I put a tiny bit of vanilla essence in but I don't think it was really needed - the sugar's flavour was enough. I topped it with thinner water icing, and balls of marzipan to make it a little like a Simnel cake (the marzipan had sugar in but was easy to remove from one piece).

I think it looked all right in the end (though it took a little effort to get the marzipan to stay in place as you can probably tell!). But more importantly, flute group enjoyed it. It was very spicy and flavourful, and the texture was really nice too. I think that cake flour recipes may work well for being made gluten free because gf flour can be a little gritty, but some of that would be replaced by cornflour.

One friend said she wouldn't have known it was vegan or gluten free if I hadn't said, and my vegan friend was really happy, because she hadn't been able to have cake in six weeks since she's been not allowed sugar.

Leftovers!

Should I make one too? I think this is a great recipe, so yes! If I make it again, I think I would use a little more tea as Emily says gluten free flour tends to absorb water more, and I would bake it for a bit longer at a lower temperature to allow the mixture time to spread out. But over all it tasted pretty good! I would definitely use coconut sugar again, too, although only in a recipe where it's flavour would complement the other ingredients. I think it would be good in apple muffins for example, and other things that would be spicy. And next time I think I'll try making coconut sugar buttercream.