Almond Cornmeal Cake with Sour Cherry Sauce and Goat Cheese Topping | Bake A Cake With Frosting Recipes

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Oct

2009

Almond Cornmeal Cake with Sour Cherry Sauce and Goat Cheese Topping

Almond Cornmeal Cake is a great recipe with many wonderful ingredient pairings. Sherrie relates how her creation came to be:

Now this sounds like an unusual combination. This morning I was straightening and organizing my pantry and ran across a can of sour cherries that I bought after returning from a trip to Chicago to visit our son and daughter-in-law.

While visiting them this summer, we had dinner one night at Mado. A wonderful little restaurant that uses local farmers for their meats and produce. We enjoyed a fantastic meal and for dessert we ordered the Megas Bark (which I have made) and also their Almond and Cornmeal Cake with sour cherry jam, goat cheese and mascarpone cheese topped with candied almonds.

I love visiting Chicago. There are so many great little restaurants tucked here and there around the city and I am making it my mission to try each and every one of them. I love keeping track of restaurants we enjoy while traveling. After our trip to Italy a few years ago, I did a poster from Snapfish with all our food pictures of meals we enjoyed there. Yes, we are that couple you probably see taking pictures of their plates of food

1/2 cup cornmeal

1/2 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup almonds, ground

1 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 teaspoon almond extract

1/4 cup sour cream

Mascarpone Goat Cheese Topping (recipe follows)

Sour Cherry Sauce (recipe follows)

1. Preheat oven to 350*F. Prepare your cake pan by cutting wax paper to fit a 8-9″ cake pan.

2. Grease the pan with a little shortening, put the wax paper in the pan and then grease and flour the pan shaking out all excess flour.

3. Set aside. (I set the pan on the wax paper and using scissors or a knife draw the bottom and then use that as a guide to cut out a circle.)

4. Whisk together the cornmeal, flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.

5. Finely grind the almonds with 1/4 cup of the sugar. Set aside.

6. Beat the butter with the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar in large bowl using an electric mixer until creamy.

7. Beat in the eggs, one at a time until well blended.

8. Add in the almond extract. Fold in the almonds and the cornmeal/flour mixture, using a gentle folding motion until you have all the dried ingredients folded into the creamed mixture.

9. Pour into your prepared pan. Bake for about 25-30 minutes and the cake has pulled away from the sides a little and is nice and golden. Test for doneness using cake tester or toothpick.

10. Turn out on rack to cool and when cooled, peel the wax paper off the cake. Cut in wedges.

To plate, put some of the sour cherry sauce on the plate, put the cake in the center.

Top with a dollop of the mascarpone cheese mixture and sprinkle with a few candied almonds.

Mascarpone Goat Cheese Topping

4 ounce Mascarpone cheese

2 ounce goat cheese

1 teaspoon honey

1 Tablespoon sugar

1. Mix all together until smooth. You can add more goat cheese if you want a little more pronounced flavor of the goat cheese.

Sour Cherry Sauce

1 can pitted sour cherries

1/3 cup sugar