Restaurant recreations

One of my sources for new recipes is finding restaurant dishes I really like. Unfortunately, I can’t go out to my favorite restaurants every time I get a craving, so instead, I (try) to make up the recipes at home. After buying some truly delicious stone fruit the other day, I was in the mood for the polenta cake from my favorite Healdsburg bistro. Since I can’t get there, I set about trying to recreate it. The cake is lightly sweet, with a coarse, cornbread- like texture that carries fruit compote well. I researched substituting semolina flour for all purpose flour in baked goods. Semolina flour is made from hard durum wheat which has been ground into flour. It is high in gluten and is usually used for making pasta and breads; you can find it in either coarse or fine texture flour. According to King Arthur Flour, you can substitute semolina for AP flour on a 1:1 ratio. I tried it in a basic yellow cake recipe. It seemed to work, although the texture wasn’t quite as coarse as I expected. A bit more tweaking and I had a decent copy of the restaurant version. Replacing half of the AP flour with a combination of semolina flour and cornmeal seems to be the solution. This is not super sweet, so it is good with a fruit compote. Try making one by simmering peaches with amaretto, or plums with port.

-Josie

Semolina Cake