The Cornbread Gospels (58 page)

M
AKES
12
SQUARES

Here is a truly wonderful quick cake, with an elusive—indeed, addictive—quality. What makes it transcendent? A secret ingredient: cocoa. This isn’t a chocolate cake, mind you; instead, in the mysterious synergy that makes cooking ever-surprising, the cocoa quietly melds the spices and fruit into what may be one of the best speedy cakes I know, taught to me by my beloved early culinary mentor, Miss Kay, oh, my gosh, nearly forty-five years ago. It has been adapted, I think improved, by the cornmeal’s crunchy graininess.

When I say quick and speedy: get familiar with this recipe, and you can knock it out in 15 to 20 minutes, plus baking time. Great for drop-ins or unexpected company, and you probably have everything you need on hand. Serve it, warm, with freshly brewed coffee or a tall glass of cold milk.

Amazingly, this cake is eggless. If you’ve been looking for a cake batter the bowl of which your kids can lick with impunity (as in the pre-possible-salmonella-in-eggs days), this is it. And the dairy ingredients can easily be replaced with vegan counterparts. More great news: It can easily be halved, making a perfect 9-inch round cake.

Vegetable oil cooking spray

1¼ cups unbleached white flour

¼ cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon, preferably canela or Saigon (see Pantry,
page 348
)

½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground allspice

1 cup unsweetened applesauce

½ cup buttermilk

¼ cup (½ stick) butter, melted, or mild vegetable oil

⅔ cup raisins

½ cup chopped toasted walnuts, (optional)

Confectioners’ sugar, for sifting (optional)

1
. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray an 8-by-11-inch baking dish with oil, and set aside.

2.
Sift together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice into a large bowl.

3.
Combine the applesauce, buttermilk, and melted butter in a medium bowl. Whisk well.

4.
Stir the wet mixture into the dry mixture, using as few strokes as possible. Stir in the raisins and nuts, if using, with a few additional strokes, then transfer the batter to the pan.

5.
Bake until the cake tests clean, 40 to 45 minutes. Dust with sifted confectioners’ sugar, if you like, and serve warm.

M
AKES
9
SQUARES

This almost-classic hot-water gingerbread is very dark, very moist, and heady with molasses and spice, including, if you like, fresh or crystallized ginger. Using a measure of that New World marvel—gritty stone-ground cornmeal—gives the sweet, spicy cake a pleasing touch of texture.

Delicious in its own right, especially when served warm, I think gingerbread needs a little something to set off its intense flavors. Whipped cream is a classic choice, and good; so is ice cream; so is a baked apple with a little custard sauce. But! Late in my lifelong gingerbread love affair I found the ultimate combination: gingerbread with a warm citrus sauce. It’s an alliance I’d heard of but disputed; I couldn’t mentally taste the pairing. But Darra Goldstein’s description, in
The Vegetarian Hearth
, her book on cold-weather vegetarian cooking, was ecstatic enough to get me to try it. Now I wouldn’t dream of having this gingerbread any other way.

Vegetable oil cooking spray

1 egg

⅓ cup brown sugar, packed

1 tablespoon white sugar

½ cup dark molasses, preferably blackstrap

6 tablespoons (¾ stick) butter, melted

1 tablespoon peeled, finely chopped fresh or crystallized gingerroot (optional but very, very good)

1¼ teaspoons ground ginger

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon, preferably Saigon or canela (see Pantry,
page 348
)

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

⅛ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon baking powder

¾ cup plus 1 tablespoon unbleached white flour

¼ cup stone-ground white cornmeal

½ cup boiling water, preferably filtered or spring

Darra’s Hot Citrus Sauce (
recipe follows
s)

1.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spray an 8-by-11-inch baking pan with oil.

2
. In a food processor, combine the egg and the sugars. Stir in or buzz in the molasses and butter. When smooth, add the fresh or crystallized ginger, if using, and pulse a few times.

3.
Add the ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, salt, baking soda, baking powder, flour, and cornmeal to the food processor, along with (carefully) the boiling water. Pulse a few times, scrape the sides, then pulse again. You don’t want to overprocess, just to get everything combined. The batter will be very thin.

4.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until the cake tests clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Allow the cake to cool for at least 15 minutes before cutting into it. Serve still warm with the hot citrus sauce spooned over each piece.

M
AKES ABOUT
1½
CUPS

¾ cup white sugar

¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

Finely grated zest of 2 oranges, preferably organic

¾ cup freshly squeezed orange juice, from 1 to 2 oranges

3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Dash of salt

1 tablespoon butter

1½ tablespoons mild honey

Mix the sugars with the cornstarch in a medium saucepan, preferably nonstick. Gradually whisk in the orange zest and the juices, whisking hard to get the cornstarch incorporated properly and to avoid lumps. Add the salt, butter, honey, and 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons water, and bring the mixture to a boil over medium heat. Cook, stirring often, until the sauce thickens and clears, about 5 minutes. Serve hot, over the warm gingerbread.

I like to think of this pantry section—part glossary, part how-to—as a
lagniappe
—a little something extra. (In New Orleans, a lagniappe is the bonus item a merchant offers the purchaser to sweeten the deal.) Here, the “something extra” is more information, which I hope will help you with shopping for, using, and storing some of the ingredients called for in this book. I threw in a few opinions and techniques, too, for good measure.

Apple cider syrup:
Essentially apple cider that has been boiled down into a sweet, flavorful syrup, it has been used as a sweetener since colonial times. It can be purchased at
www.countrystoreandgardens.com
.

Baking powder:
The baking powder–containing recipes in this book were tested using double-acting baking powder. This familiar leavening agent has an eventual shelf life, after which its ability to raise baked goods decreases. Test an older baking powder’s vigor by dissolving a teaspoon of it in a half-cup of hot water. If the solution foams and fizzes, your BP is still good to go.

Baking soda:
Baking soda starts to react and release carbon dioxide gas as soon as it is moistened. After adding baking soda to a batter, make sure to bake the batter immediately. Like baking powder, it does have a shelf life, so if your box, especially a long-opened one, is dusty, test it, too, as above.

Better:
I make “Better,” my own delicious instead-of-straight-butter mixture, which I use as a spread as well as in cooking—almost anywhere butter is called for (the exceptions being butter cookies and pie crusts). Why bother? Better spreads like a dream on toast, bread, or muffins, even straight from the fridge. It has a higher smoke point than plain butter, which means Better is better for sautéing, because it’s less likely to burn. And it tastes every bit as good as butter. It’s also more healthful than straight butter, and
much
more healthful (as well as far better tasting) than margarines with hydrogenated fats or trans fats.

The following recipe makes quite a lot, but it freezes perfectly. Depending on the number of people in your family and their butter consumption, one batch can last in the freezer 4 to 6 months.

B
ETTER
M
AKES
4½
CUPS

1 pound (4 sticks) salted butter, preferably organic, at room temperature

2½ cups any mild, slightly sweet, buttery oil (I like to combine almond oil, avocado oil, and macadamia nut oil, but canola oil’s not bad)

1¾ teaspoons fine sea salt (or to taste)

Combine everything in a food processor and buzz until smooth, scraping the sides of the work bowl occasionally. Transfer the Better into smaller tightly covered containers, and freeze all but one of them. Thaw as needed. It will keep in the refrigerator for about 2½ months.

Butter:
When I call for butter in a recipe, I generally use salted butter because I personally am not wild about the taste of most of the unsalted commercial butter widely available. It’s almost always made from cultured (soured)
cream, which to me is always a little off. Whether the salt in salted butter offsets or hides that particular soured flavor, or whether it in some way preserves the butter from further souring, I don’t know. I just know I find most supermarket unsalted butters objectionable.

However, if you have access to butter churned from sweet cream (local regional dairies sometimes offer it, and it is usually quite a bit pricier than conventional butter, but its flavor is heavenly in comparison), do try it and see what you think.

If you do choose unsalted butter in any of the recipes here, since they were tested with salted butter, remember to add just a teeny bit of extra salt, no more than a few grains, to the dry ingredients.

Buttermilk:
Once the by-product of churning butter from sour milk, these days it is a thick, creamy-tasting (even when low-fat or skim) cultured milk. It is used as the acid ingredient in many, many cornbreads, especially those from the southern region of the United States. It’s also, often, eaten with Southern–style cornbread; the bread is crumbled into a bowl or glass, the buttermilk poured over it, and you eat it with a spoon, as one would eat cereal and milk (which it is, of course, in a fashion).

When buying buttermilk, look for one that has two ingredients: milk and culture. (This type is sometimes sold as Bulgarian buttermilk.) Inferior buttermilks have a long list of unpronounceable ingredients, though they will work in a pinch.

If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, substitute plain yogurt (a variety whose sole ingredients are milk and yogurt cultures, usually lactobacillus and acidophilus) and thin the yogurt slightly by whisking in a little water (say, for the equivalent of 1 cup of buttermilk, use ¾ cup plain yogurt plus ¼ cup water). Another substitute: 1 cup of regular milk, whole or reduced-fat, with ½ teaspoon white vinegar, cider vinegar, or lemon juice stirred in.