Cornmeal Olive Oil Cake with Chile Spiced Mangos

Sometimes one goes to the market and is enamored of a new ingredient. That is what happened when I saw these chile spiced mangos. I immediately bought them, ignoring the fact that I am not a big mango person. After about a couple of months the bag of chile spiced mango was still staring at me. I had not a clue what to do with it. I had originally thought that I would add them to a cake.

I began thinking about this cake. It needed to be substantial to stand up to the chile spiced mango, so I thought of an olive oil cake. Then I thought that a bit of corn meal would be a great counterpoint to the spice. So I went to work.

The cake has a big crumb and the dried mango slices were embedded nicely in the cake. It needs a bold olive oil and as often happens with my desserts, it is not overtly sweet. It turned out nicely. Here's the recipe:

Cornmeal Olive Oil Cake with Chile Spiced Mangos

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup oil
4 eggs
1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/4 cup corn meal
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 scant cups chile spiced mangos, chopped into small squares ( if you can't find them pre-spiced, drege you chopped dried mangoes in a tablespoon of chile powder)


Pre-heat oven to 300 F

In a large mixer bowl, blend the sugar, milk and oil

Add the eggs, one at a time until fully blended

In a large bowl whisk the flour, corn meal, baking powder, baking soda and salt to mix.

Add the dry ingredients to the mixer bowl and just mix until all the dry ingredients are blended into the batter

Dredge the mango pieces and fold into the batter

Pour into a prepared Lucinda's Wood Cake Box and bake for 90 minutes

I mixed a teaspoon of chile powder and 1/4 cup of 10X and sprinkled the top to dress it up a bit. As I was trying to take a photo, my picture was interrupted by Teddy who was on the prowl for some leftover cake. Teddy loves anything made with cornmeal and this cake was no different.



A profound love of cornmeal happens when you are raised by chickens and Southerners!