TWD: Oatmeal Breakfast Bread... Veganized.

Yes, these muffins are vegan.

I know. I know I told you that I didn't see myself trying to veganize my baking. It's just not something that generally interests me, particularly with certain substitutions (like margarine or soy-processed products). But, I have a good excuse for this one.

I made this bread (actually, I made muffins) vegan, because I made it for a friend of mine who has recently gone vegan. Like for reals vegan. None of this wimpy 30 day challenge stuff. No sirree, she's gone truly vegan. Since I'm all about sharing my baked goods, I knew that I needed to try and make these vegan, if I could, so that I could share them with her. And I lucked out when I read over the recipe.

The recipe lends itself to veganizing. For one... it's a quick bread recipe, which in my experience, I've found quick bread recipes to be forgiving as heck to modifications... you can make it healthier, you can make it lighter, you can make it more fattening... whatever you do, it usually still turns out delicious. But, can you make it vegan?

The recipe already used applesauce and a tiny bit of oil as it's fat. So, I didn't have to worry about subbing out butter. The problem laid in two ingredients: Eggs and Buttermilk or Whole Milk.

What to do? Well, I subbed a smashed up banana to replace the eggs and I used unsweetened almond milk to replace the milk (I didn't even worry about trying to make the milk buttermilk, though I could have with a little vinegar in the milk).

The batter came together nicely and quickly and I had these bad boys in the oven within about 5 minutes of starting the process.

To be completely honest, I didn't have high hopes. I've had delicious vegan baked goods before, but I just assumed that my first foray into the genre would be lackluster. I figured that my banana and almond milk substitutions weren't good enough. That there were some other fancy dancy baking products that cost an arm and a leg that I should have bought and used instead.

But I'll be damned if these weren't some of the BEST muffins I've ever had. Not even one of the best vegan muffins, but one of the best muffins, period. Delicious. Sweet (I think, I probably should have accounted for the additional sweetness of the banana, and cut back on the sugar, but D-A-M-N I loved them being so freaking sweet), spicy, moist without being wet, and a tender crumb.

I mean, really... this is a kick-ass recipe. I will be making these again and again. And I've already got more ideas for more modifications... maybe I could make it a slightly healthier vegan muffin. But, I shouldn't get too far ahead of myself and just enjoy the muffins as they are now... delicious and animal friendly.

Oatmeal Breakfast Bread

Brilliant Recipe by Dorie Greenspan

Chosen for Tuesdays with Dorie baking group, by Natalie of Oven Love.

I know, right? Who knew you could take the taste of an oatmeal cookie and put it into the form of a moist, tender bread or muffin??? It's truly genious. The cinnamon is fragrant and alluring and the pop of the dried fruit (I used raisins) is like a little firework in your mouth amongst the sturdy, yet soft oatmeal.

Yes, I'm getting poetical on your ass, but this is truly a delicious recipe. It really is like an oatmeal raisin cookie in a softer, gentler form.

The substitutions I made: I made a half recipe and got exactly 12 muffins (although my vegan recipe didn't rise at all, so I might could have gotten 10 really full muffins). I used white whole wheat flour, I subbed one small banana smashed for the 1 egg, and unsweetened almond milk for the milk. I also used raisins and didn't have any walnuts or pecans, so I left those out of the topping.

Do yourself a favor.... make this recipe and make it vegan! I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

You can find the full recipe here on Natalie of Oven Love's Blog.

TWD: Cocoa Nana Bread

I haven't been baking that much lately. And ya know what? I miss it. Hopefully I can sneak a few more goodies in a little more often.

So, this recipe is the latest Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. And it's a bread with loads of chocolate and bananas thrown in. Ya know... so you can eat it for breakfast or call it "kinda" healthy. Neither of which accurately pertain to this recipe.

I halved the recipe and made it in a disposable loaf pan. The cook time didn't really work for me, though. First of all... the bread oozed out of the top of the middle of the pan. And I never really felt like the center got cooked enough.

In the end I ended up with ends that were too dry and a center that was slightly over-cooked, but edible. The bread was definitely delicious though, and I think if maybe I cooked it in a regular loaf pan it would have cooked more evenly. Because of the dry crumb, I found myself digging the chocolate chips out of the bread and just eating them. The banana flavor was very subtle. I kept thinking that it would be delicious with a smear of peanut butter. Ya know... just to make it even "healthier."

Click HERE for the recipe, thank's to Steph of Obsessed with Baking's for choosing this week's recipe. I've had my eye on it for awhile and was happy to finally make it!

Cranberry Scones

Call me many things... obsessive, selfish, crazy, alcoholic, self-obsessed even. Whatev. I'll admit it.. I'm a little bit of all those things. Am I working on correcting any of that about myself? Ehhh.. not really. It's all at healthy levels, I swear.  But the one thing for me, that I hope that I am NEVER described as... is uppity or snobby. That is the one thing in people that really drives me crazy. I mean, who am I to judge other people and think I'm better than them? Exactly.

As such, I try to avoid all possibly snobby-inducing situations. What are snobby-inducing situations you ask? Well.. sipping tea whilst my pinky is thrust out. Wearing hats to weddings. Having a dinner party with 14 different forks set out at each place setting. You know.. those everyday occurances for snobs. I'm never above heating the water for my tea in the microwave or getting drunk at weddings by doing shots at the bar next door everytime a slow song comes on (with the toast always... "here's to never getting married!") or breaking out the stryofoam bowls and plastic spoons for my chili at a get together... That's how I roll, baby. Class-less all the way.

So, it's only natural that I generally stay away from the scone. For me, scones fall into the pretensive food category amongst the likes of caviar, escargot, and petit fours. They were foreign to me. Until Starbucks bursted onto the scene, I'd never heard of a scone, I don't think. But as soon as I did... I immediately imagined them being eaten at high tea with some crumpets or some shit. Soooo not up my alley. I'll take biscuits and sausage gravy, please.

Back in 2008, I took a trip to Oregon with my mom. We ended up staying one night in Newport, Oregon (only because I wanted to check out the Rogue Brewery while I was there... YUM!) at this really nice hotel right on the beach, the Elizabeth Street Inn. We were on the elevator at the hotel, just after we had checked in and some other ladies were telling us about how in the afternoon they have warm chocolate chip cookies in the lobby and then one lady remarked rather emphatically about the scones at the free breakfast in the morning. "Oh the scones!" she said. "The scones are delicious!"

Scones, huh? A delicious scone? I couldn't fathom why she was so enthusasiatic about something as plain and boring as a scone.

So, of course, the next morning... I had to try a scone. And I'll be DAMNED if she wasn't right. I had a lemon poppyseed one and it was crumbly and sweet and unlike anything I'd ever had before. I've been searching for the right recipe that would give me the same texture as that scone. Some scone recipes are basically just biscuits. But, this scone... this was more cookie like. Harder, crumblier, and sweet.

Serendiptiously last week, I received an email from C&H Sugar. The email said that they wanted me to make something from their website's recipes and blog about it and in exchange they'd send me a $20 giftcard to help me with the expenses. How cool is that?

I eagerly hopped onto their recipe website and perused their recipes, trying to decide what to make. This proved to be a difficult task. I mean... it's a sugar manufacturer's website... all the recipes are going to sound amazing (doh!). But as soon as I saw this recipe for Cranberry Scones, I knew I had to try it. They turned out delicious! Crunchy and crumbly on the outside with a tender crumb on the inside. Delicious as is, with a sprinkling of powdered sugar on top or with a smear of jam. Not pretentious at all. In fact... dare I say... homey, even?

Thanks C&H!

Cranberry Scones

recipe by C&H Sugar

This recipe is easy. Usually biscuit recipes intimidate me, but the ingredients came together easily and turned out wonderfully!

Remember, these aren't supposed to be super sweet. They have just the right amount of sweetness that lingers on the tongue and makes you want to go back for one more little bit. Which turns into another bite, etc.

I think these would be just as good with raisins and maybe a little cinnamon thrown in. I'm including the butter-vanilla glaze recipe which sounds delicious, but I opted out of.

2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup C&H Pure Cane Granulated Sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup butter, sweet chilled

1 egg

2/3 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup cranberries, dried

1 tsp orange rind, finely grated (optional)

Butter vanilla glaze (optional, recipe below)

Preheat oven to 400F. In a large mixing bowl sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, and salt. Using a pastry blender or the paddle on an electric mixer, cut in butter until mixture is the size of course crumbs. Add dried cranberries (and orange rind, if using) and toss to coat. Make a well in the center and set aside.

In a small bowl blend egg and buttermilk; add all at once to flour mixture. Mix until moistened. Turn dough out onto a floured work surface and knead 10-12 times. Place dough onto a lined cookie sheet. Flatten dough into an 8" circle. Frequently dipping knife into flour, cut dough into 8 wedges. Separate wedges by 1". Bake 20-25 minutes. Place baked scones on a cooling rack. Let cool 5 minutes. Brush scones with glaze if desired.

Butter-Vanilla Glaze

1 1/2 cup C&H Pure Cane Powdered Sugar, sifted

2 tbsp butter, melted

2 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla

Mix all glaze ingredients in small bowl.

Makes 8 scones.

TWD: Fresh Mango Bread

Full disclosure: I was NOT excited about making this recipe. It just didn't sound all that appealing to me. For one, I don't really like mango. I mean... it's okay, but not something I feel like should be thrown into breads. I like it more when it's mixed with lime, garlic and pineapple and spooned raw over a grilled piece of fish or something.

I recently bought my first mango, though. About a month ago, my grocery store had mangoes on sale and I thought... hmm... I'll buy a mango. Why not? When I got that bad boy home... I had NO idea what to do with him. I mean... what in the world is that hard center about? I couldn't get my knife through it and it had no discernible start or end point. I ended up just sawing off random bits of the ends. And the taste? Blech. It was like eating slightly dampened chalk.
I had a feeling that this mango was not a ripe mango.

After that experience... the mango and I... well, we were on the outs.

I had already decided to skip this week of Tuesdays with Dorie, until I was browsing my grocery store's circular for the week and saw that mangoes were on sale again this week. Awwwwwww... hell. That's a sign, no? So... I picked one up. (Luckily I had read in the Tuesdays with Dorie weekly Problems & Questions forum how to pick a ripe mango... A ripe mango, apparently has a little give when you press it, fyi).

I nonchalantly started to make this bread yesterday... again fumbling with the awkward mango and it's hard core. There HAS to be a way to cut a mango, but I couldn't figure it out on my own. So, again, I ended up just whacking around the ends and trying to avoid the core. The recipe calls for diced fresh mangoes? Well... mine ended up being massacred fresh mangoes. But, who cares, right? I'm not going to like this recipe anyhow...

I only made a third of the recipe and fit all the batter into a mini loaf pan and the only substitution I made was regular raisins instead of golden. And, I must say... I'm starting to see a theme here. Much like how the ever-expanding fat rolls that I have keep spilling out over my waistbands (ala muffintop), so do all the pie, muffins, cakes, tarts, bread recipes that I make of Dories in their pans. I mean.. What the hell? Is it just me? (It could have something to do with the fact that I rarely make a whole recipe and I'm always halving/thirding/quartering recipes and Dorie always writes her recipes like this... "pour the batter evenly amongst the muffin tins" She never says... "fill your muffin cups up 3/4 of the way." So, everything oozes out... (last weeks tart? holy moly)). So did this recipe. Ooozed out all over the place. Arg!

Anyway... Folks... I'm renaming this bread... NINJA Bread. Because it totally sneaks up on you and blows you away. Seriously. This bread is like candy. (I did add extra brown sugar to the recipe... I like my breads sweet, what can I say?). Dangerous Candy Ninja Bread. I loved the crunchy top and the chewy edges. YUM. I think I'll play around with this recipe in the future... and try out some other fruits instead of mango (cause... i'm still not best friends with the mango... haha I just flashed back to the SNL sketches about Mango ).

So, thank you Kelly Baking with the Boys for picking this recipe... and thank you Harris Teeter for having mangoes on sale this week.

TWD: Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins

Being born and raised in Nashville I get the best of all worlds... It makes me a southern girl... but I also feel like I can shun the stigma some people place on the South because...
1. TN was the last state to secede from the Union in the Civil War
2. My ancestors are all from East TN, and during the civil war they were like... "what??? you say there's some sort of war going on??? hmph. we don't know nothing about no war."
3. (My most favorite!) Nashville was dubbed the "Athens of the South" forever ago, because we have so many higher institutions of education (and we were the first Southern City to institute public schools) as well as having lots of arts and culture.

Boo-ya! Look at us Nashvillians, all refined and stuff.

Anyway... being a southern girl means I was raised knowing 3 things:
1. Dinner is the mid-day meal and supper is the evening meal.
2. Everything's better with a little pork fat thrown in.
3. Cornbread is always, always, always devoid of sugar. ALWAYS. You hear me, Dorie... ALWAYS.

I've talked on this blog before about how my mom makes the best cornbread. Bar none, hands down the BEST cornbread. Like biscuits, there are a million different ways to make cornbread and while my mom's recipe might not be your favorite... there is room in the culinary spectrum for all different types. Yes, including what my family calls "yankee cornbread..." aka... cornbread with sugar in it. Instead of raging against the sugar in cornbread, I've decided to be okay with it and just never let sugar touch any cornbread of mine. This, is what I call personal progress, folks.

My mom's cornbread recipe is made with white cornmeal and has nothing fancy in it. No corn, peppers, chili powder... nothing like that. So, when Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake (check out her blog, it's excellent) chose Savory Corn and Pepper Muffins for this weeks Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. I was excited to step outside the "comfort box" for cornbread and whip these up.

I invited my family over for dinner this weekend to celebrate my parents 41st wedding anniversary and made these. I'm sad to say... that these were not the hit of the dinner. In fact, I didn't really like them at all. I omitted the sugar and the corn kernels from the recipe, but aside from that... made as instructed. Mine came out dry and pretty flavorless... even with the jalapenos and chili powder. Go figure.

Better luck next time... different strokes for different folks, as they say.

If you like fancy cornbread with bits in it and sugar, check out Rebecca's blog for the recipe.

Nigella's Banana Bread (err... Muffins)

Last year for Christmas, my dear friend April bought me How to Be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson. Clearly... she knows me well. I mean, if there is anything in this world that I want to be... it is definitely a domestic goddess. And if there is anything in this world that I am NOT, it's definitely a domestic goddess. So, there ya go. Perfect gift.

So, I've had this cookbook for over a year (she gave me my present early) and I have YET to make something from it. I've probably read the whole thing, including most of the recipes... and while I enjoy reading the intros to the recipes and the way Nigella describes the food, nothing has jumped out at me screaming: MAKE ME NOW. Which, is a shame, because... I NEED to become a domestic goddess. I mean... I'm a single 28 year old girl. When I say I NEED to become a domestic goddess, I'm not kidding. I need a man, folks. And everyone knows... Domestic Goddessdom= Snagging a Dude.

Finally, last night with three big bananas at the peak of the ripeness, I decided to start my quest to become that domestic goddess.

I cracked open the book and found this recipe for banana bread, that I decided to make into muffins instead. I was a little surprised that the recipe didn't include instructions for myself... like, I was expecting it to say...

First, go into your wardrobe and pick out the tightest, deepest v-neck sweater that you have. Put it on. Next, curl your hair with a curling iron, so that you have soft, bouncy curls. Then put on extra mascara and black eyeliner and a little bit of a pale pink lipstick. Put on your sexiest, highest heels and pour yourself a glass of wine. Now you are ready to bake.

But, it didn't. So, I put on my apron, stayed in my sweatpants and tshirt, and pulled my hair back and got to work. I know, very non-domestic goddessy of me.

Anyway, I'm ALWAYS finagling with quick bread recipes. Trying to make them healthier and lighter (I know... AGAIN very non-domestic goddessy of me... Sheesh. Maybe I'm not cut out for this domestic goddess jazz). And this recipe was no different. I did some butter and sugar substitutions, added some pumpkin I'm trying to use up for some extra nutrients and moisture and voila... Heathy-ish Banana Muffins.

They turned out well... a good banana flavor and very moist. Next time, I'll add nuts and wear some stilettos.

Nigella's Banana Bread (muffins)
adapted from How to Become a Domestic Goddess

So, this is how I made the recipe. So, there are a few substitions and changes. She also added boozy raisins to her batter, but I opted out of that.

Make sure to cook these muffins through. With all the extra fruit they are VERY moist and therefore aren't delicious right out of the oven. They are kind of gooey at first and need to set and cool a good bit. Once they do, though, they are a really good, easy, healthy muffin recipe. And if you want to completely stray from the the domestic goddess route, then try some whole wheat flour, instead of all white. (I know, shameful!).

1 cup + 2 tbsp all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup splenda
2 large eggs
3 medium-large, very ripe bananas, mashed
1/3 cup unsweetened pumpkin puree
1 tsp vanilla extract

Grease a muffin tin.

Preheat the oven to 325F and get started on the rest.

Put the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium sized bowl and, using your hands or a wooden spoon, combine well.

In a large bowl, mix the melted butter, applesauce and sugars and beat until blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the mashed bananas and pumpkin. Then, with your spoon, stir in the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture a third at a time, stirring well after each bit. Pour into muffin tin. They don't rise much, so I filled them pretty much to the top and bake in the middle of the oven for about a 45 minutes (but check after 30). When it's ready, an inserted toothpick or fine skewer should come out cleanish. Leave in the pan on a rack to cool.

TWD: Kugelhopf

Some things in life are worth 5+ hours of your time. This cake... is not one of them. I mean, for chrissakes, I ran a marathon this weekend in less time than it took for this damn cake to be prepared and finished.

Yolanda The All Purpose Girl, chose this recipe for Tuesdays With Dorie and bless her heart... but she picked a doozy. I mean, I dont know... maybe it's just me... maybe I'm the only one who felt like there was a crap-load of effort put into this crummy cake/bread.

Okay, okay... enough whining... I'm just grouchy cause I didn't read the recipe till late on Sunday and it was just so freaking time consuming. Ugh. (Apparently I'm not a yeast bread kind of gal).

I halved the recipe and put it in heart shaped, mini-muffin cups since I don't own a Kugelhopf pan or even a bundt pan. And I can assure you, I will NEVER own a kugelhopf pan. (Even though its a kick ass word to say!). I also omitted the raisins/currants and added nutmeg (I know, I'm shocked, too) to the dough. And since I had little mini muffins... I dunked the kugelhopf muffins into butter and then rolled them around in cinnamon sugar... and even that couldn't really save them. Oh well.

Pumpkin Bread

Ok, so I realize... I've become one of those bloggers that I used to hate. I am posting two pumpkin recipes in the span of 8 days. Sue me.

But, it turns out... that pumpkin, nutmeg, etc... well, they aren't the nasty tasting foods that I thought they were. My bad.

I had a half can of pumpkin puree hanging out in my fridge leftover from last week'sTuesdays with Dorie recipe and I asked my friend Steph for her favorite pumpkin bread recipe.

She sent me to a link from Allrecipes.com that seriously had like a zillion awesome reviews. This is some bread, apparently.

I made some changes to make it a wee bit healthier. I plugged the changes into a nutrition calculator and came up with 191 calories (50 from fat) per serving. Those changes were:

Halved the oil with unsweetened applesauce
Used Splenda for 1/3 of the sugar in the recipe.

It turned out great with those changes. Sweet and moist (just how I like my bread!). I will be trying this recipe again and I might try the 89 calorie/serving version: all splenda and all applesauce. If I do, I'll let you know how it turns out.

Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread.

TWD: Dimply Plum Cake.

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie was chosen by Michelle at Bake-en. She chose the Dimply Plum Cake.

This cake was an experiment in substitutions for me. First off... my grocery store had peaches on sale, so I opted to follow my pocketbook instead of the recipe and picked up some peaches. Little did I know that they were sale because they were shitty. Pretty and red on the outside... hard as a rock and flavorless on the inside. Awesome.

I also attempted to make this recipe healthier... I used white whole wheat flour and applesauce instead of oil. And instead of brown sugar, I used the Splenda Brown Sugar. These substitutions worked out great!

I also substituted cinnamon instead of cardamom (what the heck is cardamom???) and almond extract instead of vanilla. Those two substitutions.... ehhhh.. not so great. This cake would have been awesome if I nixed the cinnamon and used vanilla instead of almond extract. As it was, it was pretty good... but the almond extract was wayyyyy overpowering and the cinnamon... ehhh.. I just wasn't feeling it.

It was a good cake, though... and I'll likely try it again with actual plums.

I halved the recipe and came out with one mini loaf pan.

TWD: Black & White Banana Loaf

I have this love/hate type of relationship with bananas. I go through phases where I love bananas. And then the love phase is immediately followed by a phase where I just don’t like them at all. And lately… it seems like the hate phase has been in full swing. Basically, the only way a banana sounds really good to me right now… is if it’s sliced into a bowl a cereal. I love bananas with my cereal. Mmmm.

So, when I saw that Ashlee of A Year in the kitchen chose Black and White Banana Loaf for this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, I was less than thrilled. And then I read the recipe and saw that it had chocolate in it. Chocolate and Bananas, you say??? Now, that’s a recipe I can get behind.

This recipe is a banana bread with chocolate banana bread swirled through it. It calls for two things that I NEVER have in my kitchen… dark rum and nutmeg. Thanks to our knowing the recipes further in advance, I was able to actually borrow some dark rum from my parents booze stash awhile back and the nutmeg… well… it will continue to not step foot in my kitchen. Yuck. I hate nutmeg. My bread is sans nutmeg.

The recipe came together very quickly. Although Dorie kept saying in the recipe that the batter would be lumpy. But, mine was never lumpy. I’ll tell you one thing though, I felt like there were a lot of bowls. I mean, I know a lot of recipes use a lot of bowls, but this one I actually noticed… Jeez… this is a lot of bowls on the counter...
(and in the sink).

When it came to the swirling part… well, my bread batter was as thin as pancake batter. So, it basically just kind of all melded together, except there was a little middle spot that stayed purely chocolatey. The rest of the bread looked like muddled crap.

I halved the recipe and came out with one mini loaf and 3 muffins.

The results? Ehhhh… I liked the crispy/chewy edges and I liked the chocolate part of the batter. But, I wasn’t super thrilled with the rest of the bread. The white/banana part of the bread was very tough. I must have mixed it too much, but the chocolate part was tender, moist and fluffy.

If you’re a huge banana fan, then you’d probably like this recipe. The only way I’d make it again, is to make it all chocolate (because that marbling technique is just too fussy for me), and to make it MORE chocolate-y.

Be sure to get the recipe at Ashlee’s above linked blog and check out the other Dorie Guys and Gals at the link above.

Cornbread

I have a confession.

I’ve been living a lie since 1989.

And, I feel the need to finally confess my sins and wash away the guilt.

So, here goes.

I cheated in The 1989 Sumner County 4-H Cornbread Muffin Competition. I was the grand prize winner, but, I did not make the cornbread muffins.

When I was in grade school, everyone had to participate in the classroom level 4-H cooking competitions. There were categories for no bake cookies and cornbread muffins. If you won, you automatically got to participate in the county level competition held at a local community college. Basically, this means you had to waste your Saturday sitting around waiting for your baked (or non baked, as the case may be) goods to be judged.

That Saturday morning, my mom helped me make the cornbread muffins and by make, I mean, she threw everything into a bowl (she never measures anything) and I stirred. That was my single contribution, I stirred.

At the end of the baking process, she put pats of butter on top of the muffins and off we went to the community college.

We sat there for about 3 hours, luckily (actually, not so luckily) they scheduled a talent show to coincide with the competition so that we competitors would have something to watch while they tasted all the goods.

After 3 hours of watching kids sing or dance in horrible neon bows and matching puff paint shirts (it was 1989 afterall), my mom and I decided we were out. My mom wanted to play golf, instead of wasting the rest of her Saturday.

Later that afternoon, we got a phone call from a classmate of mine’s mother who was also at the competition. Apparently, MY cornbread muffins had won Grand Prize and she was going to bring MY ribbon over.

I couldn’t believe it. I had never won anything in my entire life and technically, I hadn’t won this either.

But, it doesn’t take winning a 4-H competition to know that my mom does make the best cornbread. Hands down, bar none, it’s what she does best and no one else’s cornbread that I’ve ever had comes close.

So, yesterday, I had her make it while I watched and tried to learn. She does it all by feel (how can you bake without measuring??!!!????!!!???), but I tried to roughly estimate the amounts of each ingredient.

So, here we go… My mother’s Sumner County 4-H Grand Prize Winning Cornbread recipe. It’s not sweet, but it’s baking at it’s best.

Cornbread

1 ½ tbsp Butter
1 ½ cup Self Rising Corn Meal
2 tbsps Self Rising Flour, sifted
1 Egg
¼ cup buttermilk
1 tbsp regular milk
1 tbsp oil

Preheat oven to 375.

Place the butter in a round 9 inch pan and put into oven to melt and heat pan (dont let the butter burn while you prepare the cornbread though!).

Mix the cornmeal and the flour together. Make a well in the center of the flour and cornmeal mixture and add the egg, buttermilk, regular milk and oil. Incorporate all together. If mixture is too dry, add more milk to thin it out. It should be a pourable batter similar to a thick pancake batter consistency.

Pour into heated pan with the melted butter and cook till golden brown.

Where's the pintos?