Make sweet cornbread cake your new summer dessert.

If you’re a fan of cornbread you know that it has a natural, wholesome sweetness. Slathered with butter and a little jam or eaten plain alongside soup it’s the only bread I know that can travel from breakfast to dinner to dessert.

But a true dessert cornbread (in my books) needs to be a little sweeter than your standard recipe. That’s why I love this sweet cornbread cake recipe. It’s sweeter than my other cornbread recipes (has 10 Tbsp. of sugar) but still isn’t as sweet as a regular cake, which means the cornmeal taste isn’t lost. A little molasses  rounds out the flavour, and molasses is also drizzled on top for added stickiness.

This cake needs no frosting. Simply serve it with sweetened fresh berries. Sweet cornbread cake suits all of your favourite summer fruit, from rhubarb compote to strawberries, raspberries, sliced peaches, blueberries…

Sweet Cornbread Cake

Ingredients:

• ½ cup fine or medium cornmeal, spooned in
• 1 ½ cups flour, spooned in
• ½ cup + 2 Tbsp. sugar
• 1 Tbsp. Baking powder
• ½ tsp. salt
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 3 Tbsp. Crosby’s Fancy Molasses, divided
• 1/4 cup oil
• ¼ cup melted butter
• 1 ¼ cups milk or buttermilk

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F and line an 8” baking pan with parchment paper
2. In a large bowl whisk the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
3. In another bowl beat the eggs with 2 Tbsp. of the molasses. Whisk in the oil and the milk. Gently whisk the wet mixture into the dry, stirring just until no lumps of flour remain.
4. Pour into prepared pan.
5. Bake about 45 minutes, until the edge of the cake is pulling away from the sides of the pan and a tester comes out with just a few moist crumbs attached.
6. Let cool in pan for about 10 minutes then remove to a cooling rack.
7. Drizzle with remaining Tbsp. of molasses before serving.

This cake is delicious served warm.