Lemon Cornmeal Cake #TheCakeSliceBakers

As per tradition, December is Baker's Choice with the Cake Slice Bakers.

In the spirit of the season, I always choose something Christmas-y: a Swiss Roll, a Buche de Noel...

...and this year Lemon Cornmeal Cake. Check out the links at the bottom of the post to see what the other bakers chose!

What's Christmas-y about a cornmeal cake, you ask? 

It's a New Mexico thing.

I love New Mexican Christmas. It's a feast for the eyes and the senses-- luminarias lining walkways and adorning rooftops, the smell of pinon wood in fireplaces, and holiday specialties like tamales (corn masa parcels with delicious fillings like red chile meat or cheese and green chile) and champurrado (a spiced cocoa thickened with leftover masa from your tamalada).

For a Christmas party this year, I made "New Mexico-flavored" macarons. Some of the flavors were Mexican hot chocolate, blue corn honey, biscochito, and green chile pinon.

Yum.

Admittedly, cornmeal ≠ masa, but I didn't just use ANY cornmeal...I used New Mexican blue corn meal. So I think it counts.

Last January, when I received my copy of Little Everyday Cakes, I made like four different cakes the first week (don't judge! They're so easy to make, and I was excited to try them!) 

One that I tried was this Lemon Cornmeal Cakes...and I loved it! If you have ever tried a polenta cake, you have an idea of this cake's texture. The cornmeal flavor really only adds a textural element--lemon (and blueberry) are the predominant flavors. The cookbook author describes it as "pleasantly grainy." "Grainy" to describe a cake doesn't sound great, so I'd go with "textured and hearty"-- same idea, but it sounds "foodie-er).

The recipe recommended adding fresh blueberries on the top. As a lemon-blueberry fan, I thought that was an awesome idea--and the blueberries would be a nice accent to the blue corn speckles.

Plain blueberries...er...roll off. 

So I thinned out some blueberry jam with lemon juice and added some fresh blueberries.

I've said it every blog post, but I thoroughly enjoyed baking through Little Everyday Cakes. Every recipe I made was yummy. Cheers to a great year of baking, and looking with hope towards 2022!

Even though it might not be your usual holiday fare, give this Lemon Cornmeal Cake a try! It might become a new holiday classic;)

Merry Christmas!

Lemon Cornmeal Cake

from Little Everyday Cakes by Candace Floyd

Cake:

1/2 cup sour cream

1 cup sugar

3 room temp eggs

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 cornmeal (white, blue, yellow...you choose!)

1 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

zest of 1 lemon

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup canola oil

1 T lemon juice

Glaze:

2 T lemon juice

6 T powdered sugar

Heat the oven to 350. Grease an 8" round pan and line with parchment. Dust with flour.

Whisk the sour cream, sugar, and eggs in a large bowl. Add the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt and lemon zest--stirring until smooth. Stir in the vanilla, oil and lemon juice. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake the cake for 25-30 minutes (mine took 35), or until toothpick comes out cleanly. Cool cake in pan for 10 minutes. Mix the powdered sugar and lemon juice and glaze the warm cake. 

Enjoy!

Each month The Cake Slice Bakers are offered a selection of cakes from the current book we are baking through. This year it is Little Everyday Cakes by Candace Floyd. We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes!

Follow our Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the thumbnail pictures below to take you to each of our cakes. If you have a blog and are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details.

The Cake Slice Bakers also have a new Facebook group called The Cake Slice Bakers and Friends. This group is perfect for those who do not have a blog but want to join in the fun and bake through this book.

This is our last cake from Little Everyday Cakes - and traditionally our last bake for the year is free choice, and our choices for December 2021 were ~

• Gingerbread Cake from My Recipe Reviews
• Kahlua Cake from Making Miracles
• Lemon Cornmeal Cake from Amandie Bakes
• Lemon-Sour Cream Pound Cake from  All That's Left Are The Crumbs 
• Mexican Chocolate Cake from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Rum Cake from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Strawberry Cake from A Little Bit of All Right