Bright and tart Thomcord grapes combine with savory-sweet cornmeal in a cake that straddles the seasons.
This in-between time of year in Southern California can be both wonderful and confounding. If you’ve ever spent any time outside of SoCal, September usually means the chance to pull on a sweater and enjoy the cooler weather. But as everyone who lives here knows, that feeling is weeks away for us.
But my favorite is grapes. And not just any grapes. I’m talking about the perfumed, bloom-covered garnet Thomcords. A cross between Concord grapes and Thompson seedless, Thomcords are a California specialty that possess all the intense grape flavor of Concords but without the giant seeds. That means you can cook and bake with Thomcords with greater ease than Concords. I’m not a table-grape eater and rarely will snack on them , but when Thomcords are in season, I eat them by the handful.
First, the grapes were lovely cooked down with just some sugar, but their juices were too loose, or worse, too sticky and jam-like to not become tough as fruit leather after baking. I found that adding a cornstarch slurry at the end helped to thicken the juices just enough while giving the fruit a smooth and tender quality.
But the real success of this cake is in how you treat the cornmeal. When you bake with cornmeal, the finished cake can be slightly crunchy from the coarse grains, especially in a cake batter like this that isn’t super wet. The key: Add the cornmeal to the wet ingredients first to let it plump up and absorb some moisture — like when you soak beans or rice before cooking — so that it bakes evenly, resulting in a tender cake with no crunchy bits of grain.
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