CHERRY POLENTA CUPBOARD CAKE

Back in December for the Little House Christmas Party, I made a cherry crumble cheesecake. Being Christmas, the shops were bare, and I ended up using a tinned cherry-flavoured pie filling in place of the cherry and jam layer which should have gone between the cheese and cake bits of the dessert. It turned out just as tasty, but because I had a weeee panic in Co-Op at the time, I ended up buying two tins of the stuff on account of not really being sure of how much I would need. As you might expect, until about seven o'clock yesterday evening I still had a tin left over, and was fairly dubious as to whether or not I would ever end up actually using it.

But then the rainy Sunday night-induced cake yearn came in. I had a quick browse through Dan Lepard's Short & Sweet and settled on making his Cherry Polenta Pudding, on the basis that I could probably cobble together most of the ingredients, and actually use up that tin of pie filling in the process. As the cooking process commenced, it began to dawn on me that I was lacking rather more of the ingredients than I had initially anticipated. First, there was the issue of butter which, fortunately, was happily alleviated by the addition of Lurpak Spreadable. Then, it became apparent that I had neither milk nor ground almonds, so up went the polenta content and, in case it ended up being too dry, I added an extra egg. By this point my cooking had basically descended into chaos, the egg being a rather last minute edition, the kitchen drawers refusing to open/close and the fact that I somehow managed to burn myself whilst attempting to wash up part way through. When, after half an hour or so, the cake not only baked all the way through but actually tasted fucking delicious, I was extremely relieved. I would almost go as far as to say that this recipe is actually worth buying tinned pie filling for. Seriously.

100g butter (as stated above, I used Lurpak Spreadable. I don't know whether this is actually butter.)

200g sugar (I used an amalgamation of 2 parts caster sugar, to 1 part demerara and 1 part light muscavado, since I didn't have enough of any of them to make up the full amount.)

3 eggs

150g polenta (incidentally, left over from this)

75g flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tin of cherry flavour pie filling

• Preheat your (fan) oven to 180ºC (non-fan 160ºC)
• Grease and line a tin. Springform, maybe? 23cm maybe?
• Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs. Whisk more.
• Mix in polenta, flour (sifted) and baking powder, then fold in pie filling until you get a ripple effect
• Spread into tin and bake for around 35-40 minutes.

Eat as quickly as heat permits, maybe with cream, custard or ice cream; although if you've already resorted to this recipe, chances are you won't have any of it!