Recipes #14 & 15: Rhubarb Cornmeal Cake & Muscat Marscapone Cream

Two recipes in one post, boo-yah!

There were several ingredients here that I had never used before, such as cornmeal (I didn't even know what this was or how to use it before this recipe - it kinda sounds like birdfood), and marscapone - which I have always seen in the dairy section at Pak'n Save and thought to myself "ooooo, I wonder what I can use that in". I even had to ring my mum from the supermarket and ask her what muscat was (answer: dessert wine. Oh, I so knew that!).

Oh I looooove rhubarb...!

I had a little bit of trouble finding cornmeal to start with, then I went to the health shop - the one that wanted to sell me glace cherries for $15 - and I found out it's also called polenta (still wouldn't of known what it was...). The recipe asked for fine cornmeal, but I only found coarse ground - the end result being a slightly grittier texture to the cake.

My own addition to the recipe: Chia seeds

Overall this was a fairly easy cake to make - you don't need to pre-cook the rhubarb, just chop it up and cover with sugar for up to ½ hour to let some of the juices flow before mixing in with your batter. Then pop in the oven for an hour and voila!

I made the cream the following night so we could take it around to a friends for dessert - one major bonus is you only use ½ a cup of the muscat, so we got to enjoy the rest of it with our dessert. This again is fairly simple - form peaks with egg whites, and then fold everything together. I don't think mine was quite thick enough, but it tasted really delicious - it had such a nice light texture for quite a rich flavour. And it went really well with the rhubarb cornmeal cake. We actually all ended up having 2-3 servings of cream with each slice of cake!

Chris is first in again...

Note the gorgeous baking bag - a craft-it-round
gift from Briar over at Bellabree x

Overall this was a delicious treat to top off a wonderful night with friends - the flavour of the rhubarb didn't come through as much as I had expected, but still really tasty, and a wee bit crunchy (next time I'll try to find fine cornmeal).

We didn't get to bring any of it home much to Chris' dissapointment...
Chris' rating: 4/5