This recipe was shared with me by Ruth English, a regular volunteer at Marston Community Gardening. Ruth often makes this cake for garden work parties since it is accidentally gluten-free and diary-free. It was recommended to Ruth by her Brazilian friend Yas.
This cake makes good use of that half can of sweetcorn lurking at the back of the fridge. You could also use leftover frozen sweetcorn if you cooked too much! The wonderful golden yellow colour of this cake comes both from the sweetcorn and the fubá, which is a fine flour made from milled corn. In Oxford, you can buy it from Brasileiro on Cowley Road.
The recipe does contain eggs, so I tried a veganised version; substituting the two eggs for the liquid from a tin of chickpeas, also known as aquafaba. Apparently 3 tablespoons is roughly equivalent to one egg. I read afterwards that a can typically contains between 8 and 12 tablespoons depending on the brand. That likely explains why my mixture was a little runny, so it’s worth actually measuring it.
If you are a member of a community larder, you might have recently picked up a giant can of coconut milk. This is a great cake to make use of some of it. In fact you could make 14 cakes with one can! Once opened portion up the coconut milk into airtight containers and pop them in the freezer to use in future recipes.
If you tried the egg-less version, why not make use of the chickpeas and some coconut milk in this chickpea and coconut dahl recipe from BBC Good Food. I’ll definitely be cooking this up for dinner soon. The website also has a handy search tool to find recipes with a particular ingredient – there are 2921 with coconut milk if you need more ideas.
I was curious about the origin of the cake and discovered that ‘Bolo de fubá’ or ‘corn cake’ is traditionally made during the São João festival in June, likely with fresh corn. The festival was introduced by the Portuguese and is a celebration of rural life, as well as giving thanks for the rain. I’m embracing that sentiment after all the wet weather here recently and hoping this marks the end of our rainy season!
Preparation time: 10 minutes Cooking time: 30 minutes Servings: 12
Ingredients
- 200 mls coconut milk
- 1 cup fubá (fine corn flour)
- 1 cup coconut sugar (or just sugar)
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup canned sweetcorn
- 3 tbs coconut oil
- 3 tbs shredded (dessicated) coconut
- 1 tbs baking powder (gluten free)
Method
It couldn’t be easier to make this cake. Mix everything, apart from the baking powder, in a blender or food processor until smooth. I actually used a stick blender and a pyrex glass jug. Then gently stir in the baking powder – it starts to react as soon as it touches a liquid.
Pour into a bundt cake tin and bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for 30 minutes. I don’t have a bundt cake tin, so used two loaf tins or you could use two sandwich cake tins.
My cake didn’t rise dramatically, but had a light fluffy texture and mild coconut flavour. Delicious on its own or even better with a scoop of ice cream.
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