Raspberry-Maple pudding cake

This wonderful recipe is from one of my findings in my trip to the US, a copy of Epicurious magazine with “America’s best recipes”. It is supposed to be a Yankee classic, but I decided to give it a southern touch using the grits I bought at Nora Mill Granary, a beautiful mill established in 1876, sitting alongside the Chattahoochee River in the foothills of the North Georgia Mountains (thanks Tonya and Joe!).

The original recipe is for a cranberry-maple pudding cake, but I made it a raspberry-maple pudding cake and it was delicious.

Ingredients

• 2 cups fresh or frozen raspberries
• 1 cup pure maple syrup
• 2/3 cup heavy whipping cream
• ¾ tsp finely grated orange peel
• Pinch, plus ½ tsp salt
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup stone-ground grits
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 large egg
• 3 Tbsp. sugar
• ½ cup whole milk
• ½ cup (I stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 ºF (200 ºC)

Combine first 4 ingredients and pinch of salt in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat and simmer 1 minute. Remove from heat.

Whisk flour, grits, baking powder and ½ tsp salt in a medium bowl.

Whisk egg and sugar in another bowl.

Whisk milk, melted butter and vanilla into egg mixture.

Add flour mixture to egg mixture, whisk.

Pour warm raspberry mixture into an 11” x 7” or 8” x 8” glass or ceramic baking dish. Pour batter over.

At this point you will be like “it is impossible that this could turn into a cake!” But it will, trust me.

Bake cake until golden and raspberry mixture bubbles at edges, about 28 minutes.

Cool 15 minutes.

Serve cake warm, topped with crème fraiche, whipped cream, or vanilla ice cream.

Obviously, you can change this recipe to its original self and use yellow corn meal instead of grits and cranberries instead of raspberries, but you will be missing a real treat 😉

Enjoy!

Recipe from Bon appétit, January 2008 – Epicurious Spring/ summer 2014