My new favorite Cornbread recipe

I tend to bake late at night, I'm not sure why, I just do. So last night, around 11:30pm, I decided to whip up a new recipe I had found on allrecipes.com for Cornbread.

Who doesn't like cornbread? I've always made the super easy, somewhat healthy recipe on the package of cornmeal. It uses just a little oil, you can make it with one egg and one egg white, not too much sugar, it's great! But cornbread was on my mind recently, yes with Thanksgiving coming up, but I was also delightfully surprised when I went to dinner at a little cafe recently to be given a deliciously yummy and BUTTERY piece of cornbread while waiting for our meal. What a great idea! And way better than the typical bread basket. So I was craving a more buttery unhealthy cornbread recipe and came across this one below. It's not overly buttery either, but in my opinion, it's kind of perfect, and a recipe I'll be holding onto for a while. The best part? You can make it at 11:30pm and it will be done by 11:30pm. . . of course daylight savings time helps.

Grandmother's Buttermilk Cornbread

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2/3 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup buttermilk (duh, I didn't have buttermilk. . . let 1 cup of milk with 1 tablespoon vinegar or lemon juice sit for ten minutes and there you go -- a tip I learned from Jenni!)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 8 inch square pan.
2. Melt butter in large skillet.* Remove from heat and stir in sugar. Quickly add eggs and beat until well blended. Combine buttermilk with baking soda and stir into mixture in pan. Stir in cornmeal, flour, and salt until well blended and few lumps remain. Pour batter into the prepared pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.**

* I used my 3 quart saucepan, which was big enough to later mix everything else into, and didn't have to dirty a bowl.
** It will only take 30 minutes unless you use part or all whole wheat flour instead of the all-purpose, but why would you do that? Need I remind you that there's already a stick of butter in there?

spinach & cheese = a match made in heaven

I'm trying out new recipes for Thanksgiving and holy holy have I got one for you to try.

It's very possible that I like anything with spinach and cheese, especially Gruyere cheese. I tried this recipe today though and thought it was extra wonderful so I wanted to share it. Even the picky husband liked it! So here we are, Spinach Gratin, brought to you by everyone's most favorite and fabulous chef, the Barefoot Contessa herself, Ina Garten:

Spinach Gratin

Ingredients

* 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
* 4 cups chopped yellow onions (2 large)
* 1/4 cup flour
* 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
* 1 cup heavy cream (I used all whole milk, no heavy cream)
* 2 cups milk
* 3 pounds frozen chopped spinach, defrosted (5 (10-ounce) packages)
* 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
* 1 tablespoon kosher salt
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 1/2 cup grated Gruyere cheese

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saute pan over medium heat. Add the onions and saute until translucent, about 15 minutes.** Add the flour and nutmeg and cook, stirring, for 2 more minutes. Add the cream and milk and cook until thickened. Squeeze as much liquid as possible from the spinach and add the spinach to the sauce. Add 1/2 cup of the Parmesan cheese and mix well. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper.

Transfer the spinach to a baking dish and sprinkle the remaining 1/2 cup Parmesan and the Gruyere on top. Bake for 20 minutes until hot and bubbly. Serve hot.

**Next time, on Thanksgiving if not before then, I will saute the onions a little longer, until they're not just translucent but golden brown. The best part of the gratin was the golden bits of cheese around the top edge of the dish, so I think if you get the onions to brown a bit too it would have that delicious sweetness and crispness that this dish needs.

a holiday roulade

presenting the pumpkin ice cream gingerbread roulade!
Originally uploaded by with an eye

 

I remembered years ago that my mom and I made a gingerbread and pumpkin ice cream dessert, and I set out to attempt a repeat performance. I found many recipes online, and I read the section about rolled cakes in the Martha Stewart handbook. I decided to combine a few various things, thus making my own completely stolen/original recipe. And, may I add, it was delicious.

The ice cream was classically semi-homemade:
1 quart of vanilla ice cream, softened 15 minutes at room temperature.
1 1/4 c pumpkin puree
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice
1/4 tsp ground ginger

Just put all of this in a medium sized bowl, and mix together with a hand (or stand) mixer and mix it up. When it's all uniform just put it back in the ice cream container. I covered it with plastic wrap before putting the lid back on. Freeze it for at least 4 hours.

I made the gingerbread from scratch, and I was nervous about all the recipes I'd read - but this worked brilliantly. You'll need:

5 large eggs, separated
1/2 cup molasses
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger
3/4 cup cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar

In a large bowl beat the egg yolks until pale (about 2 minutes), and then add the molasses, brown sugar, fresh ginger, and beat until combined. In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, ground ginger, allspice, black pepper and salt. Beat the dry ingredients into the egg yolk mixture until combined.

Now, in a clean bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks appear. Add 1/4 cup of granulated sugar and beat until firm and glossy. Fold the egg whites into the batter until all the streaks are gone.

Spread the batter onto a 12 x 17 baking sheet, lined with parchment paper and sprayed with Baker's Joy. The batter won't rise too much as you bake it, so load it up without spilling over the sides of the pan. Bake in a 325 degree oven for 15 minutes. It will be lightly browned and a little springy to the touch. Mine was a little bit sticky and I might have been able to leave it in a few more minutes, but it ended up ok.

When it's done, cool it in the pan for 10 minutes or so. Now here comes the big roulade trick. Sprinkle the top with confectioners sugar and run a knife around the edge to loosen the cake from the pan. Lay a clean linen cloth on top of the cake and place a larger baking pan on top of the towel and quickly invert the entire pile, hopefully dumping the gingerbread onto the towel and larger baking pan. Remove the bottom pan (the one that was in the oven) and the parchment paper. Starting at the short end, roll the cake and towel together and place seam-side down on the baking sheet and cool completely in the fridge (about 2 hours). Once I saw the outcome of this cake I had little concern that it would tear or crack when I rolled it - it's very springy and spongy.

Remove the ice cream from the fridge and let it soften at room temperature for 15 minutes. I found it easier to put it into a bowl instead of softening in the carton. You want to get the ice cream to be firm but spreadable, and not super duper melty. When the ice cream is the right consistency remove the roll from the fridge and carefully unroll it. Spread the ice cream over the cake, going completely to the edges. Roll it back up, without the towel this time. Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and freeze in freezer for 6 hours or overnight.

You can trim the edges after it's been re-frozen, if you want to make them look pretty for presentation. Enjoy!

I've still got about 6 slices left, who wants left-overs?!