bolognese polenta and apple cake (bustrengo)
This is a superb moist cake, a bit like a clafoutis in France, but by adding breadcrumbs and using polenta it becomes very much like an Italian bread and butter pudding. It’s something that Italians would cook in the embers of the fire after dinner.
Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4 and butter a shallow 28cm/11 inch, loose-bottomed cake tin. Mix the polenta, flour, breadcrumbs and sugar in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together the milk, eggs, honey and olive oil. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture, making sure you stir it all together well. Add the figs, raisins, apples, cinnamon, orange and lemon zest and salt, and stir again.
Pour the mixture into your cake tin and bake for about 50 minutes. Keep an eye on it – you may need to cover it with some foil if you find that it starts to brown too much at the edges. Before serving, sprinkle over some caster sugar. Then make sure you eat it warm – lovely with a dollop of crème fraîche and a glass of vin santo!

• from
Jamie's Italy
Ingredients
• a knob of butter
• 100g/3½oz polenta
• 200g/7oz plain flour, sifted
• 100g/3½oz stale breadcrumbs
• 100g/3½oz caster sugar, plus extra for dusting
• 500ml/18fl oz full fat milk
• 3 large free-range eggs, preferably organic, beaten
• 100g/3½oz runny honey
• 55ml/2fl oz olive oil
• 100g/3½oz dried figs, chopped or torn up
• 100g/3½oz raisins or sultanas
• 500g/1lb 2oz firm eating apples, peeled, cored and roughly diced
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• zest of 2 oranges
• zest of 2 lemons
• 1 teaspoon salt
All the best,
Michelle
aka Baroness Tapuzina
baronesstapuzina.wordpress.com
Jamie's recipe for Dried Fruitgums from his book "Happy Days with the Naked Chef"
A few of my friends feed their kids really nice dried apricots, plums, peaches, pineapple and apple as a treat instead of giving them boiled sugar sweets. Surprisingly, the kids absolutely love them. I actually think that a little paper bag of dried fruit is quite cool, but my friends fool their bambinies by cutting the fruit into shapes to look more like sweets.
When I cook these 'fruitgums' I normally do about 500gr or a kilo / 1 -2 lbs of dried fruit at a time. You can do simple types of fruit, or combos like mango and pineapple or peach and apricot. I simply whiz the dried fruit down to a very smooth puree in a food processor, then scoop it out on to some greased greaseproof paper. Using a palette knife, spread it out into a square, about 0.5cm / 1/4 inch thick, then slide it on to a baking tray. I normally heat the fruit puree in the electric oven at 70C/150F overnight, which is very convenient for me, or, if you're in a rush, heat it at 160C/300F/gas 2 for a couple of hours - the cooking time really depends on how moist the fruit was to start with.
When it's done, your layer of fruit should be soft but firm, a little bit like a winegum. Remove it from the oven to a chopping board, peel off the greaseproof paper and slice the fruit into small bite-sixed pieces. Make a variety of shapes - squares, triangles, circles, strips. These can be kept in an airtight jar until you need them. It's lovely to wrap them in little paper bags and put them in your kids' lunch-boxes. They'll love em.
Pat
I'm looking for a easy carrotcake topping?
Thanks
Marieta
if it exists can you let me know
Thanks
Thanks Jamie
food even smells bad thank you so much for taking the time to read this it will mean a hole lot to her
manuela, Bologna, Italy