Tennessee Locavore

Apple Loaf Cake - A Sweet Slice of Fall

 

Thanks for visiting my site - please visit this post at my new site, MouthFromTheSouth.com

Let me put my biases & handicaps up front.  I am not a fan of most low-fat, "healthy" baked goods.  I think they're usually one note as far as flavor goes and are crammed with so much sugar that you risk putting yourself into an insulin coma after eating them.  They're usually not much lower in calories than regular baked goods (again - because of all the sugar) and they don't satisfy me which seems to be a common problem with most low-fat baked goods.

I also am not that much of a baker.  Oh, I can make cookies, brownies, quick breads and even make a good pie crust.  But baking is not my strength so the idea of tinkering with a recipe is a bit scary for me.  But I'm determined to get out of my comfort zone - the only thing I'm risking is that a recipe won't turn out and that's not that big of a deal, is it?  

With that being said, when I was looking for a recipe that used apples I kept coming back to a recipe I had marked at one point in my favorite cookbook, Passionate Vegetarian.  I had found several other recipes from other sources I thought would be tasty but something about this simple loaf cake intrigued me.  The other recipes I was contemplating trying all sounded delicious but they all seemed to be drowning in fat with sour cream, cream and/or butter being used in such liberal quantities that the apples seemed almost an afterthought.  Apples are so delicious and so in season now that I wanted a recipe that celebrated apples.  I wanted a recipe that stressed that pure apple flavor, rather than smothering it.

Even so, I was a bit hesitant to use the whole wheat pastry flour that the author, Crescent Dragonwagon, suggested using instead of regular all-purpose flour.  I didn't want the cake to be too heavy and even though I've had very good results using whole wheat pastry flour, I felt a bit reluctant to add another "healthy" substitution to an already fairly low-fat cake.

I don't know why I ever doubted Crescent.  I'm sorry and it won't happen again.  This is a seriously delicious cake.  I made my husband hide it from me because during the course of two hours, I ate a third of it by myself, sliver by sliver, using the excuse that I had to neaten out the ends.  This cake tastes like fall - redolent with spices and with such a strong apple flavor.  It's got substance but it's in no way heavy.  I loved it so much as is that I never even thought to try to make it with regular flour.  Everyone I've served it to has enjoyed it and asked for the recipe.  It's going in our regular rotation.

I'm not a huge fan of raisins or nuts in baked goods.  Instead of using raisins, I substituted dried cranberries in for the raisins and left the nuts out.  I think the cranberries went very well with this cake and I wouldn't hesitate to use them again, even if I was making this cake for devoted raisin lovers.  I also decided to substitute butter in for the canola oil in the recipe.  If you'd rather use canola oil, go ahead.  Use 1/4 cup and increase the applesauce to 1 1/4 cups.  It's delicious both ways but I'm a devoted user of butter in all things baked so I tinkered and found that I liked it with the butter just a little bit more so that's the recipe I'm posting.  The recipe suggests sprinkling with powdered sugar for serving but I love it as is.

Please make sure you use high quality spices in this recipe.  Don't use the canister of cinnamon that's  been sitting in your pantry since 2004.  My local food co-op sells bulk spices so you can buy very small quantities of whatever spices you need.  You can also purchase wonderful spices online from Penzeys. I am in love with their Vietnamese Cinnamon.  I also consider their double strength vanilla a necessity in my kitchen.

 

Sweet Harvest Applesauce Breakfast Bundt Cake
Adapted from Passionate Vegetarian
Makes one 9-inch bundt cake, one 8-inch loaf cake or three 5-inch loaf cakes

Cooking spray
1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour, plus a little extra for the pan
1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
8-10 vigorous gratings of nutmeg
Dash of ground cloves
Dash of ground allspice
1/2 cup dried & sweetened cranberries
2-4 tablespoons walnuts, toasted and chopped (optional)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons applesauce
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Equipment: 9 inch bundt pan, 8x4 inch loaf pan or three 5x2 inch loaf pans. (I used the 8-inch loaf pan) 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Prepare your baking pan. Spray pan with cooking spray.  Dust the inside of the pan with a little flour, knocking out the excess.

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and allspice. Reserve 1 tablespoon of this mixture and place in small bowl, along with the cranberries & nuts (if using). Toss this mixture well and set both bowls aside.

Combine the sugars with the egg, applesauce, melted butter and vanilla.  Using a wooden spoon, gently mix the flour mixture into the applesauce mixture.  Stir until combined and stir in cranberries (and nuts if using). 

Spoon the batter into your prepared pan.  Bake for 30-35 minutes(My pan took 40 minutes). Test for doneness by inserting a toothpick into loaf to see if it comes out clean. Remove pan from oven and let cool on a wire rack for ten minutes.  Run a knife around the edges of pan and turn over onto the rack and rap sharply on the bottom of the pan to remove cake from pan. Let cool completely(if you have more will power than me!).

Please click here for a printable recipe!  

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Fresh Corn-and-Asiago Cheese Bread Pudding

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Y'all - I'm melting here in Knoxville.  No - seriously.  I'm really melting.  Yesterday it got so hot in our living room that Marcus walked in and I had been reduced to a mere puddle on the floor.  The only thing that saved me was that he sucked me up with a straw, brought me into our air conditioned bedroom and when I started to regain my solid form, he put in the freezer to finish the cooling off process.  It was a very close call.

However I am such a committed food blogger that I dared - nay, I was thrilled - to turn on my oven this past week to make the following recipe.  This was spectacular in oh-so-many ways.  It's a cinch to throw together.  It's delicious.  It's heavenly straight from the oven, beguiling at room temperature and reheats like a dream.

I inhaled three servings of this stuff the first night we made it - it's one of the most comforting comfort foods I've ever made, yet there's nothing stodgy or heavy about it.  The chewiness of the bread, the luxurious smoothness of the cream, the salty pungency of the cheese mixed with the sweetness of the corn - all of this combined made me sigh when I took my first bite.  This dish is as soothing as cool, crisp cotton sheets but there's nothing overly familiar with it.  This is a dish I'm willing to turn my oven on for right now - that's saying a lot.

The first time we made this, I used Asiago Pressato - the only kind the market had.  This is a younger version of Asiago then most people buy.  It's a bit sweeter than the more aged Asiago and the texture is creamier.  The second time I made it, we used a more traditional Asiago - most versions were delicious.  If you can't get find Asiago, I think this would be delicious with many different cheeses - you might try a good Parmesan (no buying the pre-grated stuff!) or Pecorino Romano.

Fresh Corn-and-Asiago Cheese Bread Pudding
Adapted from Southern Living
Yield:  12 servings

1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup whipping cream
3 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
8 cups 1-inch cubes of french bread or other sturdy bread (I used one loaf french bread)
4 cups fresh corn kernels
1 1/2 cups (6 oz.)Asiago cheese, shredded

Whisk together milk, cream, eggs, salt and pepper in a large bowl.  Add bread and toss to coat all the cubes.  Let stand for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Butter a 13x9 inch baking dish well.

Stir corn and cheese into the bread mixture.  Spoon into pan.  Bake at 375 for 45 minutes or until set and golden brown.

Please click here for a printable recipe!

 

Some other recipes using fresh corn:
Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Mozzerella, Corn & Tomatoes 
Summer in a Bowl Corn Chowder
 

Please join us by participating in SummerFest 2010!  Post on your blog or in the comments or join us on Twitter by using #summerfood.

 

 

The Quest for the Perfect Snickerdoodle or What I Did for Love

Thanks for visiting my site - please visit this post at my new site, MouthFromTheSouth.com

They say the surest way to a man's heart is through his stomach.  I'd have to disagree - the surest way to anyone's heart is through their stomach but when I know I need to pull out the siren song to lure my husband toward a much needed chore that needs to be done, I put on my retro jello mold apron and whip up a batch of these cookies.

Snickerdoodles are the cookie of Marcus' childhood.  Along with his beloved cinnamon rolls, snickerdoodles represent love and security - they take him back to those sun-filled moments most of us have of our youth - those times when we felt like everything was taken care of and we felt nurtured and adored.  

When Marcus and I first met, he would wax rhapsodic about these cookies and I could never understand why he was so coo coo for cocoa puffs about them.  I had many encounters with snickerdoodles in my youth, particularly at school bake sales.  I could never understand why a person would choose a snickerdoodle over the gooey meltiness of a brownie, or the sticky, crunchy goodness of a rice-krispie treat.  The snickerdoodles of my youth were always dusty affairs, a granular desert-like dessert.  I like my cookies with crisp browned edges, and soft centers, not with a dry, desiccated sandiness that seemed to suck the moisture from my mouth.  

But I loved the boy, and if he loved snickerdoodles, I was going to make them for him.  This was at least twelve years ago so the internet was still in its beginning stages but I found somebody's tried and true recipe on a usenet group and gave it a shot.  These cookies weren't great, but they were good and I could see the potential behind them.  I kept trying recipes but never seemed to find the zenith of snickerdoodles I was shooting for - melting butteriness mixed with sugar and spice with crackly edges and a pliable center.

About six years ago, Marcus and I embarked on a baking marathon.  Armed with a new DSL connection, we did a search on the internet and found six recipes that seemed promising.  So in one day, Marcus and I baked our little hearts out and found the winner - Mrs. Sigg's Snickerdoodles at Allrecipes.com.  Instead of shortening, we use all butter but the rest of the recipe is the same.

With a cookie like this, using the best ingredients you can is essential.  There's no chocolate or nuts to break up the flavor of the actual cookie so using the best ingredients will make these cookies sing.  I use double-strength vanilla from Penzeys and I really love their Extra Fancy Vietnamese Cinnamon in this recipe.  I recently used their new cinnamon blend and while it still makes a great cookie, I'm still partial to the Vietnamese Cinnamon.  If you can swing it, organic butter is also a great idea.  I've made test batches with non-organic and organic butter and I think the cookies made with organic butter are better. 

All of the above are nitpicky things but when you're looking for the pinnacle of snickerdoodles, you're willing to go to any length to achieve perfection.  My husband is coo coo for cocoa puffs over these cookies, but not as coo coo for cocoa puffs as I am about him. 

 

Note to anyone who might have received cookies from me recently - no cookies were harmed, licked or nibbled on during the filming of this photo shoot.

 

 

 

Our Perfect Version of Snickerdoodles
(Adapted from Mrs Sigg's Snickerdoodles)

1 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt 

2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

 

 

First, cream together the butter, the 1 1/2 cups sugar, the eggs and the vanilla in a medium size bowl. 

Next, mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl, then blend into wet ingredients. Mix until all ingredients are thoroughly combined but don't over mix them!

Shape dough by rounded spoonfuls into balls approximately 1 inch in diameter. Mix the 2 tablespoons sugar and the cinnamon. Roll balls of dough in mixture.

Place 2 inches apart on parchment lined baking sheets.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes (I set the timer on 9 minutes and then check them through the oven window).  The cookies should still be slightly puffy when you get them out, but set around the edges.  

 

 

Please click here for a printable recipe!

Snickerdoodle Blondies and wrap-up of the Eat On $30 challenge

It's been a crazy last few weeks work wise and I haven't had time before now to post my thoughts on the Eat On $30 challenge.  

First, here's a breakdown of the final numbers:

Breakdown of costs:

Breakfast: Scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
Lunch: Homemade pizza with homemade sauce, cheese and turkey sausage
Dinner: French onion soup w/ swiss cheese and bread
Dessert: Snickerdoodle Blondies - 2

Breakfast:
3 Eggs: 57¢
6 tbsp milk: 18¢
3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
Bread: n/a
1 organic local apple: 70¢
TOTAL: $1.78

Lunch:
TOTAL:  $0 because these were leftover from the previous nights dinner

Dinner:
1 pounds onions: 80¢
Organic beef broth: $2.50
8 oz wine: $1.44
Bread: n/a
4 oz Swiss cheese: 56¢
TOTAL:  $5.30 (with leftovers for the next day's lunch)

Dessert:
Snickerdoodle Blondies: 76¢
TOTAL: 76¢

GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $7.84
TOTAL SPENT FOR ENTIRE CHALLENGE: $54

What are my thoughts on this challenge?  First of all - a reminder.  This is in no way an attempt to mimic the life of anyone on food stamps or on such a limited budget.  There's no way to do that and this challenge was less about stepping into the shoes of someone in that situation and more about bringing attention to the issue of hunger.  I think the challenge was pretty successful in that right.  A lot of bloggers participated and lots of people have expressed interest in doing this challenge the next time it comes around.

With that being said, I guess what it comes down to is that I DID feel like a bit of a fraud doing this challenge.  There's just no way that what I do can mimic what's it's like to have to live with this on a daily basis.  I have way too many resources - too many stores within walking distance, too much cooking equipment, too much knowledge of how to cook and eat healthy - all of these are issues I covered in previous posts.  I'm so relieved to not have to do the endless calculations to see if something was in our budget.  I'm not talking about making sure to stay within a rough amount - I'm talking about the sheets of paper I filled out with the cost per ounce of lots of the foods we eat on a regular basis.  I'm grateful that I can pour a glass of cheap wine and not have to worry about how it will affect our budget.  Like I said, my husband and I are already very frugal out of necessity but I didn't expect how wearing it could be to constantly think about food, down to each and every penny.  I take my dollars seriously but I take those pennies for granted.

What did I learn from this challenge?  I'm already a pretty thrifty person.  We have to be to stay afloat in this economy.  Vegetable odds and ends go into my freezer so I can make vegetable stock.  I do the same with chicken bones and scraps.  I was surprised by the way one ingredient can make the price per serving skyrocket. I love my Penzey's double strength vanilla but I'll be saving it for recipes where the vanilla flavor really stands out.  We do a pretty good job with not letting food go to waste in our house but I'm being even more vigilant about using everything up.  I'm also watching my grocery spending.  I'm not going to break everything down into a price per serving but I am going to keep better track of how much we're spending.  I think a lot of people underestimate how much they spend on groceries - I know I did and I'm going to keep better track of my spending in that area.  I was also amazed by how $60 seemed like such a huge amount in the beginning but when I started adding up the costs, that money flew out of my hands.

What am I going to do differently next time?  I'm going to plan ahead of time so that my fridge doesn't have any leftovers that need to be dealt with.  I want to go into a store with the money I have for the week and buy what I'll need - no borrowing from my pantry and figuring out the cost per ounce.  I've thought about buying a box of food from Angel Food ministries and figuring out how to use that with the addition of a few staples - that would be a challenge because I'd have to come up with a menu based on what I got from there.

I'd also love to get a group of people in East Tennessee to do this challenge with me the next time. I'll post about the next challenge ahead of time and I'd be glad to have a party afterwords at my house.  We could collect food or money for a local food bank in our area.  This time, I'm going to be making a donation of $27.69 to Second Harvest Food Bank - that's the price of one of those Penzey's bottles of Double-Strength vanilla that I've been taking for granted.

I strongly urge you to donate either your money or your time to one of these organizations.  They do a great job helping the working poor in our community :
Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee 
Fish Pantries

I also want to thank Tami of Running with Tweezers for organizing this great challenge.  She was a wonderful cheerleader and I'm grateful for her kind words and encouragement and for all the support I got from fellow participants, other food bloggers and my readers!  You all are awesome!

I'm going to end my posts about this challenge on a sweet note.  I'm a sugar junkie and for the sake of my husband's sanity, I knew I'd have to have some kind of sweet treat while doing this challenge.  Chocolate desserts were out - too pricey and I thought about making an apple crisp.  But then I saw this recipe on my friend Maris's blog and I knew we had a winner.  Snickerdoodles are my husband's favorite cookie of all time.  He's been known to inhale a dozen cookies in less than half an hour and he actually tested several recipes a few years ago to find his "perfect" cookie.  Because these are a bar cookie, they're much easier and while they'll never replace the actual cookie in my husband's heart, we both thought these were fantastic.

Snickerdoodle Blondies (Adapted from In Good Taste and Dozen Flours)

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour 
1 teaspoons baking powder 
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt 
1 cup packed brown sugar 
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature 
1 egg, at room temperature 
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract 
1 1/2 tablespoons white sugar 
1 1/2 teaspoons & 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, divided

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.  Lightly grease an 8x8 inch pan.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon and salt.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg and vanilla. Beat until smooth

Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture and mix until blended.  Don't over mix!  Spread evenly in 8x8 pan.

Combine the 1 1/2 tablespoon of white sugar with the 1 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and sprinkle evenly over the top of the batter.

Bake 25-30 minutes(this is what the original direction called for but ours were done at 23 minutes) or until surface springs back when lightly touched. Cool slightly but cut into bars while it's still warm.

Here is a list of the other wonderful bloggers who participated in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

• Tami of Running with Tweezers - Twitter @runwithtweezers
• Betty Joan of Trouble With Toast - Twitter @bettyjoan
• Carrie Neal of carrienealland - Twitter @carrienealland
• Paula of Bell'alimento - Twitter @bellalimento
• The Broke Socialite - Twitter @brokesocialite
• Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta - Twitter @EatItAtlanta
• Robert of WhizKid Sound - Twitter @rdyson
• Jen of Use Real Butter - Twitter @userealbutter
• Mike's $30 Project Blog - Twitter @boutte
• Zach of Mise en Face - Twitter @drzachary
• Hailey of Hail’s Kitchen - Twitter @hailskitchen
• Susan of Doughmesstic - Twitter @doughmesstic
• Frugal Hostess - Twitter @frugalhostess
• Diana of Spain in Iowa Twitter @dianabauman

The Best Cornbread I Will Never Serve My Mother-In-Law

 

Thanks for visiting my site - please visit this post at my new site, MouthFromTheSouth.com

In the family I married into, cooking is done only by the matriarchs.  They are the best cooks and they are the only cooks.  The kitchen is their domain and woe to anyone who thinks they can keep up on that battleground.  I very rarely cook for my husband's family - I usually let my husband do that.  Better for them to think that I've whipped the man into submission into the kitchen than to give the appearance that I think I can compete in the cooking Olympics.  Sure I can compete - I think I'm a damn good cook and I know many that agree.  But I'm perfectly willing to yield that reputation at their door.  Anything I would make would be too weird, too spicy, too healthy, not what they're used to.  Too different is what it boils down to and to be honest, I'm really at peace with that.  Every once in a while, I'll make something non-confrontational - tomato salad, bread, cookies.  But I never make fried chicken.  I never make biscuits.  And the last thing I would ever do is make cornbread.

Cornbread is the heart, soul and community bread for breaking in the South.  We're as passionate about it as we are about religion and football.  Family recipes are guarded carefully and the cornbread you make is never as good as the cornbread their mommas make.  It's as simple as that.  You're either using the wrong type of cornmeal, desecrating it with sugar, adding too many eggs or not using the right kind of fat in your skillet.  It's a tradition here and many feel like you should never mess with a tradition.

Although I grew up in the South, my parents weren't Southerners so I don't have any tried and true rules when it comes to cornbread.  I have no pre-conceived notions about what cornbread should taste like.  I just know what tastes good to me.  To me, a lot of the cornbreads served up north aren't the cornbreads that make up a daily part of life.  While I don't share the disdain for them that many in the South have, they do seem more like cake than bread.  Tasty, but with their copious amounts of sugar, not cornbread.  I've had cornbreads that have more flour than cornmeal but, in my opinion, that's getting rid of the essence of the cornbread.  It might be very tasty but it's a bread with cornmeal, not cornbread.  Stone ground cornmeal is heads and shoulders above any other kind of cornmeal - it hasn't had the corniness milled out.  Buttermilk does magical things in cornbread and should never be omitted.  And while my Mom always baked cornbread in a baking pan, I am a complete and utter convert to the use of a cast iron skillet in the making of a proper cornbread.  The buttery crust that shatters in your mouth, right before your teeth sink into the creamy corniness of the inside is, to me, the soul of the cornbread.

My husband on the other hand has been indoctrinated from a young age about what a proper cornbread should consist of.  Getting him to branch out and try something different was about as easy as herding cats.  But my husband is nothing but competitive - by instilling the mere thought that there might be better cornbreads out there, I was able to lead him down the path of the underground cornbread resistance.

So we went on a quest for the "perfect" cornbread.  I can't tell you how many recipes we tried - they blurred together in a cornmealed frenzy.  I checked out book after book from the library on Southern cooking and cooking in East Tennessee.  During the course of this marathon, I made some of the densest, driest cornbreads imaginable.  It was very frustrating.  And then I thought of something that I was quite ashamed hadn't occurred to me before - why hadn't I looked in my tried and true cookbooks - the one with splatters and rips in the pages.  No - they weren't "Southern" cookbooks but if they had served me well in other areas, why not check them for this?  And that's when I found our cornbread "Holy Grail".

One my favorite cookbooks is Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon. And it's definitely the cookbook I use most judging by the sorry shape it's in.  In it, she has a recipe for Dairy Hollow House Skillet-Sizzled Cornbread.  It had all the basic requirements and nothing I've ever made from her cookbook has been less than very tasty - most recipes become repeats here in our house.  And no one can say that this woman doesn't have passion for cornbread - she's written an entire book about it.

This cornbread has become the very definition of cornbread to me.  It's light as can be but still packs real substance.  I can eat a slice of it by itself and be a very happy girl but it's the perfect accompaniment to chili, soup beans and greens.

Some of you from the South are already fussin' up a storm because you saw sugar in this recipe and good, true, REAL cornbread doesn't have sugar in it.  I say, hooey.  I'll take any tried and true Southerner and give him/her two cornbreads made exactly the same, one with a little bit of sugar, one without.  Sure as spit, they'll always choose the one with a touch of sugar.  I've brought this cornbread to plenty of functions and every single time, this cornbread gets eaten up while the other "authentic" cornbreads look lonely.  Adding just a touch of sugar makes this taste like you're biting into a piece of bread made with buttered sweet corn.  It does not taste like cake in any way.

Another complaint I'm sure I'll hear is that this has flour in it.  Well, so does the basic cornbread recipe at the holy shrine of all things cornbread, Lodge Cast Iron Cookware Company.  So do many of the cornbread mixes sold to Southerners here in East Tennessee.  I know that using flour in cornbread is an anathema to many here in East Tennessee and some of you may not even try this because of it.  You're really missing out.  When you use really good cornmeal (stone ground and preferably local), the flour merely accentuates the corniness of the cornbread.  It lightens the texture, giving it lift and keeping it from being as heavy as many cornbreads I've tried.  It also creates a cornbread that keeps well and reheats beautifully - important in this household of two.  We've even frozen wedges and let me tell you, on a cold, hectic winter night, there's nothing quite so life affirming to pull out of the freezer for a quick meal than a slice of this cornbread.

We still love to experiment with cornbread but this is the one we always come back to.  When my husband and I talk about cornbread, this is the cornbread we picture in our minds.  It's the cornbread we make for our friends and my family.  It's the cornbread we bring to potlucks and parties.  Quite simply, it's the perfect cornbread.  A bold claim - indeed.

Edited to add - My friend Laura just did a post about this cornbread as well.  Check it out - it's a great post.

Dairy Hollow House Skillet-Sizzled Cornbread
(Adapted from Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon)

Note: There are all kinds of variations that you can make with this cornbread.  Over the next few months, I'll show you some of them.

1 cup stone ground yellow cornmeal
1 cup unbleached white flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1- 3 tablespoons sugar (the fresher the cornmeal, the less sugar you'll need. I use 1 tbsp)
1 1/4 cup buttermilk (please use good buttermilk if you can get it, like Cruze Farm)
1 large egg

1/4 cup mild vegetable oil, such as corn, canola, or peanut

Preheat your oven to 375.  You need to make sure your oven is good and hot if you want to get that crunchy crust that turns cornbread into a little slice of heaven.  This page has a good description on how to calibrate your oven temperature - at the very least, make sure you know how much your oven is off so you know how to adjust the heat or timing of your baked dishes.

In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients (cornmeal through sugar) and stir well to combine them.  If your baking soda or baking powder have any lumps, sift them (or break them up well with a spoon) before you measure them into the bowl. 

In a smaller bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, egg and vegetable oil.  

Put your 10 1/4 inch cast iron skillet on the stove over medium heat and let it heat up for 2-3 minutes (or as long as it takes to get nice and hot).  Add butter to the skillet and once it's melted and bubbly, tilt it around to make sure the butter has spread all over the bottom of the pan and up onto the sides a bit.  

Mix the bowl of wet ingredients into the bowl of dry ingredients.  Please make sure not to over-stir this - you only need to mix it until everything is wet.  There will still be small lumps in it - you just want to mix it until there are no big pockets of dry ingredients. 

Pour mixture into the skillet.  You should hear it sizzle a little.  Put this into the oven right away and bake 25-30 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

Cut cornbread into wedges and serve warm.

For a printable recipe, click here!