Blood Orange Polenta Cake

Like beautiful jewels on top, the blood oranges that are seasonal in winter, are so perfect, but do make this with regular oranges if you can't get your hands on them. It's a one bowl mix that you can't mess up and no icing to mess around with either. Sticky and marmaladey it's one of the best things to ruminate over with a large cuppa in the cold, grey days!

• 1 ½ Cups Almonds, ground to a meal(or 200g ground almonds)
• 1 Cup Polenta
• 6 Blood Oranges
• 3 Eggs
• ½ tsp of sea salt
• 1 tsp Baking powder
• 180ml Olive Oil
• 1 Cup Coconut Sugar
• 2 tbsp maple syrup

Blitz the almonds in a food processor until they are ground to a fine meal, with a little texture. I prefer this to the ground bought version as you get more flavour and crunch in the cake. Mix together with the polenta, baking powder, salt and coconut sugar in a mixing bowl. Peel 3 of the oranges, (this is optional, it looks lovely with unpeeled, but you may prefer peeled for ease of eating) making sure the pith is also removed, and slice finely. Line a 9” springform cake tin with parchment paper and drizzle a little olive oil in the bottom. Scatter a tbsp of the coconut sugar on top and then place the orange slices down, touching each other and with as few gaps as possible, making a pretty carpet for the batter to go on top of. Add the zest and juice of two of the oranges to the dry ingredients. Pour in the olive oil and whisk in the eggs one at a time, until a thickish batter. Pour over the orange slices and bake in the oven for 40 minutes at 180. In a small pan make the glaze, with the juice of the remaining orange and the maple syrup. Heat gently, stirring occasionally for 5 – 10 minutes until thickened. Leave cake in tin until cooled a little, then turn out, and pour glaze over, painting the orange slices with it to glisten.