You very kind people, you. I’ve been floating along on your hoorays and high-fives all week. Thank you friends, really, just thank you so much. Now of course, the real work begins. Away we go! You do know you’re coming with me, right? A few of you were in touch to ask if I’ll be taking a break from this site while I write the book (including my mother-in-law; hi, Sarah!) and the answer is a resounding Noooooo! It’s the dissertating and the teaching (and all of the administrative pleasantries that go along with that) that I’ll be stepping away from for the year. This blog is where I come to practice, to try stuff out, to write and cook my heart out and unwind for heaven’s sake. It’s my workshop. Don’t tell my editor, but I’m not even sure I know how to write a book. (“And, how?” might have been a more fitting way to punctuate the title of my last post.) But I do know that kicking myself out of my own workshop is exactly how not to do it. So there you go. You’re stuck with me.
With loony old cornbread-loving me, who is about to fill your bellies with yet another cornbread, the fourth on this site in not even as many years. Send help. Or, be a good sport and send honey, and jam and, I don’t know, maybe some fresh berries. We’ll call it a meal.
Lucky number four is from a book called The Homemade Pantry that came out last spring. I bet a lot of you have heard of it by now. Or maybe you know the author, Alana Chernila, from her blog, Eating from the Ground Up. I love Alana’s voice and what she does with it, and when she writes about fruit bowls and buzzing cells I want to reach through my screen and squeeze her. Alana does this thing when she’s writing personally – which is pretty much always – that’s pure magic. It’s as if she’s facing inward and outward at the same time. Does that make sense? Spend a few minutes with Alana’s words and I think you’ll see what I mean. She has a daughter named Rosie who cuts her own bangs, and another named Sadie, a Lance Armstrong in-the-making (goooo, Sadie!), and a husband, and a sister, and also her parents (am I missing anyone, Alana?) all sharing one seriously inspiring kitchen. On her blog and in her book, Alana welcomes us in and shows us around. I forgot to mention the subtitle of the book, so here it is: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making. That includes butter and hot sauce, mustard and crème fraiche; there are chapters on soup and pasta and crackers and candy (this woman makes her own fruit rollups, people!) and canned things, and frozen things – she’s covered it all. I’d say that I didn’t know where to begin except for that, of course, I did, when I saw she had a recipe for cornbread in there.
I’ve been looking for a first-rate classic cornbread for a while which, for me, meant something deeply corny, mildly sweet, and not too cakey. This cornbread is all of these things. It’s sweetened with maple syrup instead of sugar, and when it came out of the oven smelling like a hot syrup-drenched pancake I worried that it would taste all wrong. But nope, it tasted just right, like cornbread, not like a pancake at all. The maple syrup that hovers so heavily over the bread as it cools slips quietly out the back door when no one’s looking, leaving only a faint, warm sweetness behind. I don’t play favorites, but I will tell you that with a minimal amount of stirring and only twenty minutes in the oven, this one might be the handiest of the bunch. No offense to breads one through three.
Maple-Scented Cornbread
Adapted from The Homemade Pantry, by Alana Chernila
I baked this bread in a 9-inch round baking pan, but you can also use an 8-inch square one.
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted.
1 cup (5 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 cup (4.75 ounces) medium-grind yellow cornmeal
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
¼ cup maple syrup
Heat the oven to 425 degrees and butter a 9-inch round baking pan.
Whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
Beat the eggs in a medium bowl, add the buttermilk, maple syrup, and melted butter, and whisk some more until uniform.
Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and give it a few stirs, just until the batter comes together. Pour into the prepared pan and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cornbread pulls away from the sides of the pan, the top is lightly brown, and a tester inserted into the center comes out clean – or with just a crumb or two.
Cool completely in the pan.
Serves 6-8.