Cornmeal poundcake huh? Im intrigued

Time: 2 hours 50 minutes

Difficulty: 5/5

Ingredient Availability: 5/5

Cornmeal poundcake just kind of sounds weird, doesn’t it? I know I’ve tried cornmeal poundcake and enjoyed it, so maybe this will be a pleasant surprise, as well. I don’t have blueberries very often, so adding them to a cake, or cornbread, whichever this really is, should be nice for that alone. Let’s see if this dessert from Rodney Scott’s Cookbook is as good as one of his others.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

The ingredients for this recipe are much like those of a cornbread, which means there are pretty standard. I think blueberries are seasonal, so you may have a hard time finding them at certain parts of the year. Also, I used vanilla paste in place of vanilla extract and didn’t make the bourbon Chantilly cream because I’m not one to buy bourbon to use 1 tablespoon of it and never use it again.

Tools:

• Cast iron Pan

Cooking Review:

Batter: 20 minutes

To make the batter, I mixed the dry ingredients in one bowl, then combined the wet ingredients in a separate bowl. I melted the butter in between these steps, which made this take a few minutes longer than expected. The wet ingredients were added to the dry ingredients and mixed until combined. The batter was transferred to the cast iron pan.

Add blueberries and Baking: 2 hours 20 minutes

I added the blueberries on top of the batter and put the skillet on a baking sheet just in case the batter overflowed, which it did. I put that in the oven to bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 2 hours and 17 minutes. The recipe says to cook for 45 minutes, but after that long it was obvious that the center was still wet and raw. I checked back multiple times over the next hour and a half until it was finally set and a tooth pick came out clean after over two Hours of baking.

Macerated Blueberries: 8 minutes + 2 hours

While the cake baked, I made the macerated blueberries. This was just combining the blueberries with lemon juice and zest and sugar. There was also a little salt in that combo. I mixed it together and let it sit out covered for 2 hours.

Analysis:

Yes, cornmeal poundcake is weird. This recipe does not prove to me that we should be experimenting with cornmeal in our cakes that are not pancakes. This recipe just tastes like a sweeter poundcake with some blueberries in it. The sweetness isn’t too much, but it is definitely greater than that of the typical corn bread. The texture wasn’t terrible, there were come nicely crisp edges fresh out of the oven and the blueberries add a nice pop of flavor when you come across them. The topping adds some more sweetness and some fresher blueberry flavor, but it doesn’t really make the whole thing better. You could skip the macerated blueberries. The problem with this recipe it that it doesn’t really do cornbread nor poundcake well. The blueberries do make it better overall, but there aren’t enough to have them in every bite, so most of the time you’re just eating a more boring version of a poundcake or a slightly sweeter cornbread. There’s nothing really interesting about this recipe. Sure, there’s cornmeal texture, but for some reason it just isn’t welcome here. I’m giving this recipe a 6/10. I don’t think that you’d be happy with the result if you decide to make it, especially if you end up waiting for over 2 hours to bake instead of 45 minutes.