Food Blog

I found a great cast iron pan cornbread recipe on a food blog a while back but I’ve lost it. I worked it out though, and I’m jotting it down so I won’t lose it. But because it’s so easy and cheap, I’ll probably have it memorized soon.

1 cup all-pupose flour
1 cup yellow corn meal
1/2 cup of sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1 egg
1/2 stick of butter

I added some spices like nutmeg, vanilla and cinnamon to the above ingredients, or working with that above base, you can experiment with other things like fruit or even jalapenos.

Pre-heat the oven to 400F Melt the 1/2 stick of butter in a 9 inch cast iron pan. Be sure to just melt the butter, not boil the water out of it.

Mix the dry ingredients. Whip the egg and milk until frothy and add to the dry ingredients, mixing just until incorporated. Pour the batter over the melted butter in the iron pan, swirling it around a bit. (This is the part I learned from the elusive recipe). It may seem like a lot of butter, but don’t worry, the cornbread will absorb it all, making it nice and moist.

Bake 20-25 minutes until golden brown. Stick a toothpick in it to see if it’s done. The butter may still be foaming around the edges when you take it out, but if you let it cool for a minute it will all be absorbed.

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These are the gingerbread men published on Gapersblock’s cookie article. It’s adapted from this recipe. I’ve tweaked that recipe and added more than twice the amount of ginger and allspice, to give the little men some real snap. Next time I make these I might reduce the amount of molasses, and add some brown sugar as a replacement, to let the ginger shine through.

These cookies were particularly good, since I got the spices from The Spice House, right here in Evanston. The ginger is China Number One, which while sounding rather illegal, is excellent, powerful without being bitter or overwhelming. “The majority of ginger imported into this country comes from Cochin, India but it is inferior in quality to the top grade of Chinese ginger, known as China Number One. ” The allspice is Jamaican, with a great combination of peppery and clovey qualities.

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 T. ground ginger
1 T. ground allspice
1 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup unsulphured molasses
1 shot of bourbon
1 large egg yolk

In a bowl, whisk together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside.

In a larger bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the molasses, bourbon, and then the egg yolk. Then, gradually beat in the flour mixture, mixing just until incorporated.

Divide the dough into quarters, shape into logs and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours. To speed things up you can put them in the freezer for about a half hour. Preheat the oven to 350.

Cut one of the pieces of dough in half and keep the remaining pieces refrigerated. On a generously floured surface, roll out the dough to a 1/4-inch thickness. Cut out cookies using a cookie cutter. You can make your own out of cardboard, or shape with your hands. Resist the temptation to make them anatomically correct. Place the cookies about an inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for about 8 minutes, or until slightly firm.

Transfer the cookie sheets to wire racks. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes. Then transfer them to wire racks to cool completely. Decorate with icing or just eat.

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I attempted some baking the other day with this chocolate raspberry tart. I had some raspberries from the farmer’s market, and I intended to use them. I can’t count how many berries I’ve thrown out because, no matter how good they are, they go bad before I can eat an entire pint. So this raspberry tart recipe looked pretty easy, except for the conversion from english measurements.

I’m not going to list the ingredient measurements or do the conversions for you. I may have mentioned this before – I cook, I don’t really bake, so I don’t feel comfortable having anyone trust my instructions, measurements, or my math. I will say that I followed the above linked recipe and things turned out fine. Except for my first attempt I tried blind baking the shell in too shallow a pan, which I decided would cause a disaster so I did a second one in a regular pie pan.

For the decorating sauce, I pureed and strained a few raspberries, and mixed with some cream and sugar. Very pretty and tasty, but I don’t think anyone should follow my example and make this sauce without some sort of modification since it had the exact hue of Pepto-Bismol. Perhaps a higher pureed raspberry ratio, or the additon of raspberry syrup and/or chocolate drizzled on the plate with it will lessen the recognizability of the unfortunate pinkness.

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My second attempt at baking are these pumpkin muffins, from a recipe found on this extensive muffin recipe list.

2 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
6 T butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 1/2 cups Flour
2 T baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg

Preheat oven to 400. Beat the eggs, milk, brown sugar, butter and pumpkin. In another bowl mix the flour, baking powder, salt and spices. From the recipe: “Add the pumpkin mixture to the flour mixture and stir just enough to moisten and combine. The less you stir the muffins, the lighter and more tender they are. Lumps are okay! Pour the batter into greased muffin pans about 2/3 full and bake for 25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.” Makes 18 muffins.

I added some crushed up (maybe a tablespoon) cardamom to the melted butter, and strained it out before mixing it in. The cardamom taste didn’t show up at all. Maybe next time I’ll let it steep a bit more, or ground it up and add it to the mix.

These muffins were good, but they certainly aren’t the big fluffy towering raised muffins you see at the cafes.

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