Lemon Corn Buttermilk Pound Cake

By MaryEllen

Jenni Field created this recipe about four years ago. While she considers it one of her best cake creations ever, it’s built on her no-fail pound cake recipe, which she says can be used to feature whatever is seasonal or in your pantry.

Ingredients

• 6 ounces fresh sweet white corn kernels (or no-salt-added canned, drained, about 1 1/3 cups)
• 6 ounces whole buttermilk, at cool room temperature (about 3/4 cup, and maybe a touch more, if necessary)
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (Use GFJules)
• 1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons finely ground white cornmeal
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 12 ounces unsalted butter (3 sticks), cool room temperature
• 2 1/3 cups granulated sugar
• 1 1/4 teaspoons fine sea salt
• Zest of a medium lemon
• 5 eggs, beaten, cool room temperature

Details

Servings 1
Preparation time 1mins
Cooking time 1mins
Adapted from newsobserver.com

Preparation

Step 1

Set a rack in the lower-third of your oven and preheat to 350 degrees. Thoroughly spray and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan, tapping out the excess flour. Set aside.

Combine the corn and buttermilk in a blender jar and blend until corn is pureed. Pour through a fine-mesh strainer, pressing down well on the solids. You should end up with 10 ounces of liquid, or 1 1/4 cup. If you are a little shy of that, add buttermilk until you have 10 ounces.

Thoroughly sift or whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.

With a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter until smooth, scraping the bowl and paddle as necessary.

Add the sugar, salt and lemon zest. Cream on medium-high speed until very light and fluffy, scraping the bowl and paddle as necessary. This will take about 8 minutes.

With the mixer on medium-low speed, slowly drizzle in the beaten eggs, a bit at a time, scraping the bowl and paddle as necessary. This should take about 5 minutes.

Alternate adding the dry ingredients and the buttermilk/corn mixture, beginning and ending with dry. I add the dry in 3 additions and the milk in 2. After the last addition of dry ingredients, you can finish mixing the batter by hand with a spatula.

Scoop the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Bake until the cake is a beautiful deep golden brown and the cake is just starting to pull from the sides of the pan. The internal temperature should be 200 degrees. Baking time will vary depending on your oven. Start checking at around 50 minutes and go from there. It takes 1 hour and 5 minutes in my oven.

Remove to a rack and cool for 30 minutes before turning out. To make the cake extra moist, wrap the unmolded cake in plastic wrap and refrigerate until cool. Otherwise, leave it to cool.

This cake is lovely as is, but you could also add some lemon glaze or a dusting of powdered sugar for serving.

Variation: This can be turned into a lemon buttermilk pound cake by leaving out the corn and cornmeal and using 10 ounces (1 1/4 cups) of buttermilk and 13 ounces all-purpose flour.