Cornbread

I usually associate cornbread with being a Southern type of food, as it isn't something I eat often, in fact I've probably only had it once or twice in my life and don't remember it all that well (Apologies to whoever made it!).  This recipe popped up on the BBC food homepage and I thought I would give it a go as an alternative to a sweet bake, and sometimes you just want to churn out something from the oven quickly and simply - for those reasons, this was probably the best recipe to find! 


Ingredients:

375g/13 oz plain flour

225/8oz cornmeal

1t salt

4 t baking powder

110g/4 oz sugar

480 mL/17fl oz milk

2 eggs

110/4oz butter, melted

A small tin of sweetcorn kernels, drained

Optional: Any interesting ingredients that may add to the recipe eg. cheese, pepper, jalapenos for some spice..

Method:


1. Preheat the oven to 200 deg C. Grease a 23 cm (9-in) square baking pan with butter. (Note: Actually I found that the recipe made almost double so either half it or prepare two pans. I used a 4-in round tin and a square pan).
2. Combine all ingredients except for sweetcorn kernels. Mix until consistency is like a sponge cake batter then add sweetcorn.
3. Pour batter into prepared baking pan, and bake for around 20 min.
4. Once it has reached a golden colour and is springy, it should be ready. Cool before cutting. 

And voila! 30 minutes later a perfect cornbread is produced. Another great thing about this recipe besides its simplicity is that it freezes well. I ended up with so much cornbread i froze one pan of it - cut it until smaller chunks, wrap in tin foil and seal in a freezer bag. Next time you get the munchies just defrost one of the pieces or pop into the microwave and it turns out pretty well in my opinion! 

The texture of the cornbread was just right - light, crumbly but moist. It was slightly sweet but still savoury. I know I haven't had many cornbread experiences but this was the best I've had so far! Next time will definitely try adding some cheese and spice to the batter.. 

Butternut squash bread

Although the original recipe is actually for a baked pumpkin bread, I couldn't find the pumpkin puree, nor the actual vegetable so decided to change the recipe up a little and use butternut squash instead.  Personally I like eating bread/cake that has some texture to it so I also added raisins, apricots and walnuts in the recipe, but you can add whatever you think would taste good!

Ingredients:

Produces 1 9x5 inch loaf (or 2 smaller loaves)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 t baking soda

1 t salt

1 t ground cinnamon

1/2 t ground nutmeg

1 t ground ginger

1 cup solid pack pumpkin puree (or in my case 1 small butternut squash)

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 egg

2 T softened butter

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

A handful of raisins and dried apricots, chopped

Method:

1. To make the butternut squash puree, cut open the squash lengthwise, remove seeds and place face down on a baking tray and bake at 375 degrees F for 50-60 minutes.

2. After cooling, scrape out the insides and either puree in a food processor for 2 minutes or by hand.

3. Preheat oven for 350 degrees F.

4. Sift flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and walnuts into a large bowl. Mix in puree, brown sugar, buttermilk, egg and butter until well blended.

5. Pour into greased loaf pan and smooth tops down.

6. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until toothpick inserted into centre is clean. 

Serve it warm straight from the oven, and it makes a great afternoon tea bread with a cup of tea, or even keeping it overnight makes a nice (and pretty healthy) breakfast for the next day.  The total actual prepping time for this recipe is incredibly quick, around 15 minutes, however if you want to make the puree from scratch then allow another hour of sitting around time (even with that extra step it doesn't require much work!).  Chef Marco would probably disapprove of using all-purpose flour in the recipe, as apparently all-purpose flour makes everything extra chewy so breads and cakes should be made with their respective flours.  With that in mind I suppose I should be using bread flour, though this particular "bread" is really more of a cake (like how banana bread is really more banana cake?), so using cake flour would perhaps make it slightly less chewy.  Personally I thought it tasted fine with a little extra tug, but if you're into being super precise, the flour could be the ingredient to experiment with! 

Vol-au-vents.

The magic of puff pastry. Day 1 consisted entirely of making the traditional/German puff pastry followed by the French/inverted puff pastry.  4 hours of kneading, rolling, folding, resting and chilling 145 layers of pastry and 144 layers of fat. Yum. First item on the list were the vol-au-vents. These cute little French pastries were coated with an egg glaze and sent off for baking at 380 deg F after 30 minutes of rest time.

Making the perfect vol-au-vent is a test of how good your puff pastry skills are!  The risen pastry will show whether the individual dough and butter layers were formed properly during the process, or whether they were all smushed together into one big lump..

And tada! Not too bad for a first attempt I think.  A couple weren't set straight with the base, but at least you can see the individual puff pastry layers.. And the lids are so cute.  

Now, for the perfect filling................