It’s Cakeophilia’s second birthday! Lets celebrate with a completely bespoke cake.
I absolutely adore quinces. Golden yellow, dramatically shaped, dressed with the odd green leaf, they smell incredibly sweet, a little astringent, like ripe apples and pears and dried autumn leaves. I’m as content to have them sitting around whole making my table glossy-magazine beautiful as I am to bake them with cream and brown sugar and eat them for dessert. They usually I have them for one purpose and then the other!
I bought a few huge quinces at Richmond Market a few weeks ago, and so I’ve had a great opportunity to enjoy them in a lot of different ways. The wonderful thing about having a plethora of a prized ingerdient is that you’re able to experiment a little more you normally do might normally do! For example, I already know that quinces make the most wonderful curd. You should try it! Quince puree is used in place of lemon juice in the usual egg butter and sugar mixture.
Today I used my second to last quince for another experiment: Polenta and Quince upside-down cake. This cake is all kinds of special. The polenta batter is flavoured with extra virgin olive oil, orange zest, and almonds. The quinces are baked upside down with crab apple jelly, and the cake is glazed with more crab apple jelly. If you can’t get crab apple jelly (my Mother made mine!) then a quince jelly or any other fruit jelly (or at a pinch, pureed apricot jam) will do.
It’s so autumn. Serve it warm or cold with a dollop of thick Greek yogurt. It makes a pretty wonderful dessert cake because it is so moist, but I can tell you, it’s also not bad for breakfast!
Polenta Quince Upside-Down Cake with Crab Apple Glaze
ingredients
1 500g quince
20g butter, softened
1/2 cup crab apple jelly, melted but cool
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
4 egg whites
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup canola oil
60g butter, melted
grated zest of 1 orange
1 cup Greek yogurt
1 cup polenta
1 cup almond meal
1 cup flour
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup crab apple jelly melted, to glaze
mixing
Peel and quarter the quince, removing the core. Slice each quarter into about 5 slices, just less than 1cm thick across the peeled edge. Place the slices into a saucepan and cover with water. Bring to the boil and cook for about 5 minutes until the fruit has started to soften. Drain and let cool.
Line a 23cm cake pan with a round of bake paper and grease the sides with butter. Smear the baked paper with the soft butter (it will be quite thick). Pour the cool but still runny crab apple jelly over the base of the pan and spread out. Lap the quince slices around the edge of the pan on top of the jelly.
Beat the sugar, eggs and egg whites on high speed until thick and foamy. Beat in the oils, melted butter, yogurt and orange zest. Combine the dry ingredients and tip into the mixture. Fold in, trying not to over-mix.
Pour the batter gently over the quince and jelly. Bake the cake at 175 degrees Celsius for about 1 hour and 15 minutes until the centre is firm to the touch. Cool for about 20 minutes before turning out on a wire rack. Gently peel off the bake paper if it stuck to the top of the cake.
When the cake is cold, spread the remaining melted crab apple jelly over the cake.
Enjoy!xxx
