Miniature Sun-Dried Tomato Polenta Cake

To bake or not to bake... Honestly, I wasn't very sure if I was going to bake this eighth THB bake at first. The Home Bakers is an baking event organised by my friend, Joyce from Kitchen Flavours. With a group of gorgeous ladies, we are baking all recipes from the book, "Coffee Cakes" by Lou Seibert Pappas until every recipe has been baked from this book.

I must admit that I'm not a big fan of "salty" cakes and wasn't attracted to this recipe at all. However, seeing that I have most of the ingredients in my pantry, "the might as well" thought came into my mind...

This bake is really easy! All I did was measure all ingredients, mix and bake... That's all. I would say that this is a nice and easy lunch box recipe, great for a busy mum like me.

I think my bite sized versions of cake look more like muffins than cakes. Since my first THB bake, I've been trying to bake all my THB bakes with a little retro-style. And so, I've baked these polenta cakes using a grandma-style patty tin which gives them nice dome shapes. These little cakes seems quite retro to eat especially when they are packed up in my son's lunch box with brown paper bag and a tetra-packed chocolate milk... just like what I would expect for a classic lunch box when I was a little kid.

My slightly salty tomato polenta cakes

Making the cake batter

Baking the polenta cakes

These cakes taste better when they are freshly baked.

A classic lunch box just like what I had when I was a little kid...

Being the rule of this event, only the host of the chosen bake can post the recipe in her blog post. Please visit Yvette from My Worldwide Culinary Adventure for the detailed recipe of this bake.

And, here are the notes and modifications that I made for my bake:

My ingredients list (which is 1/2 amount of the original recipe):

3-4 tsp sun dried tomato pesto
1 egg
40 ml extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp honey
130g all purpose flour
90 ml cornmeal
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
90 ml buttermilk
grated Parmesan cheese to sprinkle

Using 1/2 of the recipe, I've baked 12 polenta muffin-sized cakes with a patty tin.

Instead of using julienned sun-dried tomato, I have replaced it with sun dried tomato pesto. I didn't use or add any hot water, dried basil, dried oregano and pistachios at all.

I've used buttermilk for my bakes and have replaced the baking soda with baking powder. To assemble, I divided my cake batter into 12 portions in the patty case. Top each portion with 1/4 tsp of pesto and about 1/2 tsp of grated Parmesan cheese.

The cakes were baked at 170°C fan forced for 10-15 min.

Happy Baking

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