Ode to Corn Cake

Ever tried to put 4 cobs of corn into a cake?

My take on the corn dessert trend is this home-baker friendly corn cake with a whopping 4 cobs of corn! My easy one bowl buttermilk corn cake is topped with a corn custard buttercream, inspired by the heavenly German buttercream. It’s a frosting made with pastry cream whipped into butter—it doesn’t crust, stays smooth and silky, and doesn’t require a stand mixer. I tested so many frostings for this cake and this version infuses so much delicious flavour.

Feeling lazy? Make the corn cake and serve with whipped cream and berries. Faster, but still delicious.

Yield: 1-8x8 square cake

Print

With ImageWithout Image

Ode to Corn Cake

Ingredients

For the One Bowl Buttermilk Corn Cake

• ½ cup unsalted butter
• ¾ cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk
• ½ tsp fine salt
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• ⅔ cup cornmeal
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 cup packed fresh corn kernels (from about 2 cobs of corn)

For the Corn Custard Buttercream

• 2 cobs of corn
• ½ cup whole milk or light cream
• 3 Tbsp cornstarch
• ½ cup white sugar + 2 Tbsp
• 2 egg yolks
• ¼ tsp fine salt
• ¼ tsp vanilla extract
• ½ cup unsalted butter, room temperature

Instructions

To make the cake

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and line a 8x8 pan with parchment paper. You can also use a 9” circular cake pan.
2. Make batter, which we’ll do right in a pot! Use a medium-large sized pot and melt butter over medium heat. Remove from heat. Add sugar, eggs, buttermilk and salt, and whisk well. Add flour, cornmeal and baking powder, and whisk until almost no flour clumps remain. Then fold in corn kernels.
3. Pour batter into the prepared pan, and smooth out the batter with a utensil.
4. Bake for 25–30 minutes, until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Allow to fully cool before icing. It can be made the day beforehand and wrapped well with plastic wrap.

For the buttercream

1. Make corn purée. Cut the corn kernels off the cobs. Blend them in a blender until fully smooth, about 2 minutes. Measure 1 cup of the corn purée–if you have less, add milk/cream to make one cup.
2. Make corn custard. To a medium pot, add 1 cup of corn purée, milk, cornstarch, sugar, yolks, and salt. Place on medium heat. Whisk continuously until the mixture has thickened, about 5 minutes–it's annoying but you want to avoid clumps and uneven cooking. After the mixture bubbles, keep the pot on the heat for 1 minute while whisking. Then, remove from heat, and vanilla and whisk in. Pour into a bowl and cover the surface with plastic wrap. Chill for at least 2 hours until fully cool.
3. Make frosting. Remove custard from the fridge and let it sit at room temperature for 30 minutes before making frosting. Place butter into a mixing bowl and beat using a hand mixer on high speed until pale and fluffy, 2-4 minutes. Add custard in 4 additions, whipping until the frosting is combined with each addition. Scrap the bottom of the bowl to ensure the buttercream is mixed well before finishing.

To decorate the cake

1. Transfer buttercream to a piping bag inserted with a round piping tip, or cut the end off so the diameter is ½ inch.
2. Pipe rounds in rows across the whole surface. To create a round, hover the tip of the piping bag ½ inch above the cake’s surface, apply even pressure to the buttercream without moving the piping bag, and stop any pressure before moving the piping bag up and away.
3. To finish and smooth out the rounds by removing any peaks, wet your finger and gently press the peak down. This is optional, but helps the decoration look like rounded corn kernels.