recipe 05: cornmeal sour cream cake

this is your sign to get all your friends together for a pastry picnic!!

TBH, this recipe is just for Alexys. But, it’s only fair to share with the rest of the class as well. After the corn cookie recipe went up, Alexys did what any rational sane person does, go out and buy all the ingredients. That recipe uses but a blip of the bag of red masa harina from Masaienda, that naturally we have to come up with more ways to use it up! (Though, she honestly could have just texted me and I happily would have leant her 55 grams of my bag...)

Last week, a group of LA bakers + cakers met up for a little picnic in the park. We each brought a lil something sweet to share. In true Kassie fashion I made four pastries… 3 cakes and some brioche cream buns with assorted jams and a peach leaf soak :) I knew Alexys would be there so I had to make something with the corn. Enter, cornmeal sour cream cake. A true fridge clean out, using up the last of the sour cream tub and the strawberries that didn’t make their way into cakes the weekend prior (big on the no waste front). I riffed up on my vanilla buttermilk cake recipe- subbing buttermilk for sour cream, some of the AP flour for masa harina for flavor and cornmeal for a toothy textural moment, and switching from creaming to reverse creaming for a more tender and dense crumb.

The cake is dotted with the juciest strabs from smith farms and is covered with my go to crumb topping. I use this crumb a lot- so I’ll make a decent sized batch and sprinkle it on any cake, muffin or brioche bun I want to add a little sumn sumn to. I almost always have a deli full in the freezer at any given moment. You’ll use just a handful of the crumb you make for this cake but, the rest can be stored in the freezer for up to a 3 months!

Since, the picnic- Alexys has asked for this cake at least 6 times. So here it is, so I don’t have to be bothered anymore about it <333

A little something to listen to while you bake: