Straight from my childhood: Toasted corn flour cake

When I was a child, my grandma used to bake for us kids all the time.
Her cakes were so good that we kept asking "How do you do it Grandma?" with our high pitched kids voices.
She would systematically answer back that she added some magic ingredient called "Perlin-Pinpin Powder" to her cakes.
Inevitably, every single family reunion would see the kids gathering in the kitchen around a cake tasting session, trying to figure out what The Perlin-Pinpin Powder was. We would even send one of us as a spy to watch her bake to try and get a glimpse of her secret weapon.

Of course, everytime she would do her magic, and we never managed to catch her in action.

The Perlinpinpin Powder legend kept us hanging on until the youngest of us got old enough to understand that the only magical ingredient that my grandma Gysèle used was her gift for making incredible food with simple ingredients.

Toasted corn flour cake

This is a local speciality that has travelled from Franche Comté to the Lyon area in France. This cake is made from toasted corn flour, called "gaudes" in French, that gives a very distinctive nutty and roasted flavour to this delicious cake. 
This was one of my grandma's signature cake. 

Ingredients: 
1 glass (approx 250ml) of toasted corn flour
1 glass of flour
90g unsalted butter
1 glass of milk
1 glass of caster sugar
2g of baking powder

Make the cake: 
1/ Preheat the oven at 160deg C
2/ Cream the butter and sugar (mix with a wooden spoon until light and fluffy and whitened)
3/ Add all the other ingredients, mix well
4/ Pour the mix in a silicone cake mould and bake for 35-45 min. Leave to cool for 5min before removing from the mould.

I keep wonderful memories of the times spent at my grandparents, baking with Grandma and building toy pedalcars with Grandpa.
Happy 88th Birthday Grandpa!