Nigella Lawson served up delicious apricot and almond cake with polenta, pistachios, rosewater and cardamom on Simply Nigella.

Nigella says: “Using ground almonds instead of flour make this cake both gluten-free and dairy-free inadvertently.

This is my idea of a perfect cake: simple, beautiful, fragrant and beguiling. I’ve been making this sort of cake, in one form or another, since my clementine cake in How To Eat, and I can’t help but feel, with a certain calm excitement, that it has reached its apogee here.”

The ingredients are: 150g dried apricots, 250ml cold water, 2 cardamom pods, cracked, 200g ground almonds, 50g fine polenta, 1 teaspoon baking powder (gluten-free if required), 150g caster sugar, 6 large eggs, 2 teaspoons lemon juice, 1 teaspoon rosewater and nonstick cooking spray or sunflower oil for greasing.

To decorate: 2 teaspoons rose petal or apricot jam, 1 teaspoon lemon juice and 2½ teaspoons very finely chopped pistachios.

See the full recipe in Nigella’s book titled:Simply Nigella: Feel Good Food, available at Amazon now.