Lemon polenta cake with lemon verbena syrup

It was a beautiful sunny winters day when we visited Lake George over the June long weekend. It was also my mums birthday.

I made her this cake.

The recipe came from a magazine in the waiting room at the doctors clinic. It sparked my interest so I took a photo with my phone back in March. I found it a couple days before mums birthday while looking through photos and decided it was the perfect time to make it.

The cake travelled well on the dash of the car. While it's supposed to be served with yogurt, on this occasion I threw a can of cream in the esky. The kids were happy, and so was everyone else, the cake went down well after our BBQ lunch.

Lemon polenta cake with lemon verbena syrup

Lemon polenta cake                                                              Lemon verbena syrup

125 gr butter                                                                           100ml lemon juice

2/3 cup caster sugar                                                              ¼ cup caster sugar

2 eggs + 1 egg yolk                                                                 lemon verbena sprig, leaves removed

100mls milk

1 cup SR flour

3 ½ tablespoons fine polenta

Rind of 1 lemon

Pinch salt

1 tablespoon icing sugar to dust + Greek yogurt to serve


Preheat oven to 175C. Grease a 26cm x 22cm tin.


Beat butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time. Beat well after each addition. Add egg yolk and mix until combined.

Stir in milk and flour alternatively, then polenta, lemon rind and salt. Pour into tin and bake for 20-25 minutes.

While cake is baking, place lemon juice, sugar and lemon verbena leaves with ½ cup water in a saucepan. Stir over medium heat to dissolve sugar. Boil for 3-4 minutes to thicken syrup. Strain syrup to remove leaves and keep warm.

Remove cake from oven and using a skewer poke about 20 holes in cake. Pour syrup over cake.


Serve warm or cold, dusted with icing sugar and a dollop of Greek yogurt.

Because it was so delicious, I remade it for a lunch dessert at home with a friend a week later. This time I served it with a dollop of Greek yogurt, and threw a couple rosemary flowers about. Still delicious!

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Monte Carlo biscuits are the bomb!

THESE biscuits are the BOMB! You have to make them.

If you don't your family and friends will never forgive you. As long as you don't show them this post, which I totally want you to do.

Monte Carlo biscuits

125 grams butter
1/2 cup sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 cups SR Flour
1/4 cup custard powder
1/3 cup desiccated coconut

Jam and icing filling
75 grams butter
3/4 cup icing sugar
1 teaspoon milk
1/3 cup strawberry jam

Preheat oven to 180C.
Beat the butter and sugar until light and creamy.
Add the milk and beat to combine.
Sift the flour and custard powder, add with the coconut to the bowl and mix in to form a soft dough.

Roll about 2 teaspoons worth to make small balls.
Place on baking tray and press with a fork to flatten. Dip the fork in flour first, to stop it sticking to the dough.

Bake for 15 - 20 minutes.

Let the biscuits cool while you make the icing.

To make icing, beat the butter and icing sugar in a small bowl, Beat in the milk.

Spread one biscuit with half a teaspoon of jam, and half a teaspoon of icing on another, then join the two together.

Lemon butter

Lemon butter or lemon curd, whatever you want to call it, is one of my childhood faves. I could just eat this stuff by the spoonful, straight from the jar.

I love getting free lemons. I love getting free anything, but my favourite is fresh produce that I can make something out of. Something to cook with to make delicious food.

You can substitute the lemon rind and juice, for any other citrus, like oranges or lime.
This recipe will make three small jars. Wash jars and lids in hot soapy water, then place in a 160C oven for 10 minutes, removing just before you place the hot lemon butter in them.

Lemon Butter

3 lemons
1 cup sugar
3 eggs, beaten
175 gr butter

Finely grate the rind from the lemons, making sure not to get too much of the white pith just under the skin.

Juice the lemons, then sieve to get rid of the pulp and pips.

Place the juice, rind and sugar in a medium saucepan, on a low temperature. Stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Add the eggs and butter, continue to stir until the butter has melted.

Turn the heat up to a simmer and stir until the mixture thickens, about 10 minutes.
Place hot lemon curd into hot sterilised jars and seal.

Ways to use your lemon butter -

• mix with yogurt, mascarpone cheese, or cream cheese for a tart filling
• on toast
• on pancakes
• a glaze for a cake
• spoonfuls straight from the jar when no one is looking
• thinned down for an easy lemon sauce. Add in herbs, chilli, ginger, garlic etc.

This is how I used some! You will need -

A pack of 2, unfilled sponges

300 mls of cream, whipped with a half a teaspoon of vanilla essence

1 small jar of lemon butter

Cut each sponge in half. Spread the bottom layer with lemon butter, then spread with some whipped cream. Place the other half of sponge on top. Repeat layering the cake like this. 

Place the last, and top section of cake.

Mix about two teaspoons of lemon butter with the remaining cream, just so it is swirled through.

Place a thin layer of the lemon cream on the outside of the entire cake. This will ensure the crumbs are held in place. Spread the rest of the cream evenly over the outside of the cake. 

I made some decorations on the top with lemon butter. Decorate it how ever you would like. You could use strawberries, toasted almond slivers, coconut or grated chocolate for example.

Have you tried lemon butter?
What homemade goodness do you remember loving as a kid?

Parcel - the herb and Mushroom Risotto

This is a handy herb to grow if you have the space in the garden. It's a perennial, so it will die down over winter, only to flourish back, ready for use in the spring.

I made a gorgeous mushroom risotto last week that called for celery. I didn't have any, but what I did have was Parcel in the garden. It's leaves look like flat leaf parsley, but smells of and has the flavour of celery, so I used it to substitute. It worked a treat.

I used some of the mushrooms that we found in June that I had frozen.  

1 onion, sliced thinly

2 celery sticks, sliced

2 tablespoons oil

350 grams mushrooms, sliced

1 lemon, finely grated rind and juice

175 grams arborio rice

400 ml vegetable stock or chicken stock

125 gr frozen peas

75 grams grated cheese

2 tablespoons grated parmesan

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Fry onion and celery for a few minutes in oil. Add the mushrooms, lemon rind and juice and cook for 10 minutes.

Add in the rice, stirring for 2 minutes. Add stock and simmer gently, covered, for about 20 minutes. If the rice isn't tender and there is no more liquid add a little more stock or water and give it another 5-10 minutes.

Stir in the peas, cheeses and parsley until the cheese has melted. 

Serve and enjoy. Delicious.

Crostoli

What do you do with leftover pasta dough? We make crustoli. Well, we do now. 

I remember these from my childhood, Mum used to make them quite a bit. I had no idea how until recently, I mentioned to her I had some spare dough after making ravioli. You could make crostoli, she said, it's just made with flour and egg anyway.

Mum never made homemade pasta, but she had a lot of Italian friends who probably let her in on how to make crostoli. Us kids loved them and they never lasted long, there was five of us! 

It's very simple, there are lots of involved recipes on the net, and you could go looking. I just used my leftover pasta dough, which is 100 grams of flour to 1 whole egg and mixed to a dough. 

For the amount of pasta in the picture, enough for a lasagne, and two strips on the bench,  I used 300 grams and 3 eggs, a pinch of salt and a bit of olive oil if it is a bit dry coming together. Knead until smooth and let it sit for about 20 minutes.

Roll the dough in the pasta machine, then cut into about 15 cm lengths and cut small slits along the middle of the strip.

Deep fry* until lightly golden, drain on paper, then dust with icing sugar. 

Bobs your uncle (fanny's your aunt). 

If I made it again, I would maybe not machine the dough so thin(mine were the thinnest setting), I was making lasagne sheets. 

*When I say deep fry, I used a deep fry pan with about a centimetre of two of oil in it.