Cheese Cake and Pan Cake – The Corn Story

My memorial day was filled with corn! With the fresh corn in season, I was eager to remake my caramel corn cheesecake. The fun part was to play with the plating. Version one, a deconstructed cheesecake, no crust, but grounded caramel corn and walnuts for the texture. Blue corn chip on top as the decoration and used some of the corn cream and foam as sauce.

Version two, a more traditional cheesecake with the baked crust. The grounded caramel corn and walnuts got mixed with butter and after it was baked, it took on a nice caramelized flavor and texture.

Annabelle can be a great promoter for the dessert 🙂

 

The hard part of this is to take the fresh corn and blend it with cream to try to squeeze out the corn flavor and then use the cream and cheese to make the cheese cake. I took 3 ears of corn and cut down the kernels and blended it with 2/3 cups of cream. I felt I was too greedy with the 3 ears, should have just used 2 because then the moisture of the corn got overwhelming in the cream and became a little bit watery. Flavor wise, I like version 2 better because the caramel flavor came through much stronger and it also has more texture.

The leftover corn fibers after I strained the corn cream mixture can still be delicious. I made a large corn pan cake with brown sugar and whole walnuts on the bottom – soft pan cake with a crispy, sweet and nutty bottom. I loved it! It was pretty much all I needed for my breakfast and lunch.

Ingredient

Corn kernel 3 ears

Heavy cream 1/3 cup

Egg 2

Flour 3/4 cup

Baking powder 2 tea-spoon

Sugar 5 table-spoons

Brown sugar 3 table-spoons

Butter 4 table-spoons

Olive oil 2 table-spoons

Zest of half lemon

Walnuts 1.5 cup

Direction

Preheat the oven to 400 degree. Mix the corn kernel, cream, milk, egg, sugar, olive oil in a blender until incorporated. Pour the mixture into the flour, add in the baking powder, zest. Stir well. Heat up a cast iron pan on high heat, put in butter to melt. Add in walnuts, stir fry for about 2 minutes, then add in the brown sugar and stir for another 2 minutes. Pour the batter into the cast iron pan and turn the heat down to low. Cook for about 3 minutes, then transfer the pan into the oven and bake for 10 minutes or until the top is golden. Serve with whipped cream and bacon salt (any other sea salt will do).