Rosemary-Lemon Polenta Cake

If you have read my earlier post, you would known that I'm not going to have recipes copied here from books that I have or recipes that I found due to copyright rules but instead, I will have personal notes from what I have modified as well as what I think works for me (it may not work for you but you can always try :)) I will try my very best to let you have more visuals which means, step-by-step pictures so you have an idea how the cake will turn out in the end. Ok, no more boring 1 picture posts ;P

For our 16th bake together, my fellow THBers are going to bake the Rosemary-Lemon Polenta cake from Lou Seibert Pappas' "Coffee Cakes". This lovely cake was chosen by Angela from The Charmed Cupcake. I hope everyone will like it and hopefully, so will I :) 

I only managed to get lavender blossoms so I used them instead of rosemary. Erm, I think that would likely make my cake "Lavender-Lemon Polenta cake" @@ Anyhow, I also didn't buy buttermilk as I don't like the idea of wasting ready ingredients in my kitchen so I used a cup of milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice and let the mixture stand for about 10 minutes before using.

After boiling the buttermilk with lavender blossoms, I poured them over the polenta and let it stand for 1 hour. I was wondering if I should 'speed' up the process of 1 hour but then I thought to just let it be - impatience can do one no good sometimes which I had experienced before hehee

After an hour, the buttermilk-lavender-polenta mixture looked pretty pale and I wasn't sure if the polenta has gotten all soft already so I just used a spoon to mix it up a little, just to be sure. At the top left corner of the bowl, you would noticed the dark yellow parts. It was really soft so I was good with that.

Geez, I really need to get better at this step-by-step picture thingy. Sometimes, you know you do get too engrossed with the whole process that you can just forget. Please forgive me, it'll get better I promise :) Anyhow, the next step is to cream the room temperature butter with the sugar. When it gets pale and fluffy, you know you are ready to mix in 1/3 the flour mixture and half the buttermilk-lavender-polenta mixture and lastly, end with the last 1/3 of the flour mixture. 

I remember the last time I tried to bake my cold cream cheese cake using this bundt cake pan, it looked pretty horrid as I was 'tempering' with the floured bundt pan thinking that it was 'overfloured'. This time, I left it all alone after the bake-spray and then flouring so it should be better (I hope).

Tada!! After 50 long minutes, out comes the Polenta cake!! Psst, I have never tasted polenta in my life before. Have you? Honestly, I'm quite curious to know how it tastes like though I did taste abit of the cake batter ;P

At around 12am+, the angle of the bundt cake just don't seem right whichever angle I turned. Oh well, this just have to suffice for now.

And now, my cut cake slice!!

Did you see some little bits that look a tad purple? Those are the lavender blossoms. Yeah!! Success to this cake! I didn't make the lavender-lemon syrup though as I thought it would be awesome enough even without it :):)