Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Orange and Black Cornbread

Today's cornbread obsession is brought to you by the colors orange and black.

I've been wanting to do a sweet potato cornbread. And, heaven knows there are plenty of recipes for sweet potato cornbread out there. Problem is, most of them are... sweet. And, sweet won't work with black beans. Because the other thing I've been wanting to do is a cornbread that celebrates the impending month of October.

Beautiful, glorious October. Month of changing leaves, mercurial weather, the return of pie pumpkins, and just about everyone's birthday. Oh, yeah... and that other holiday.

So... this calls for an unapologetically orange cornbread, speckled with black beans, topped with creepy black sesame seeds.  And, just like October in Southern Cal, a touch of heat.

It's too bad Spouse would rather die than eat sweet potato.  But, sometimes a girl's just gotta bake what a girl's gotta bake. Today, I had to bake sweet potato and black bean cornbread. 

Ingredients:
    1 1/2 C. rinsed and drained black beans
    2 ounces oil
    280 grams organic yellow cornmeal (2 C.)
    1 tsp. salt
    1 tsp baking powder
    1/4 tsp baking soda
    1/2 tsp chipotle pepper
    Dash or two of smoked paprika
    1/4 tsp xanthan gum
    9 ounces goat milk
    7 ounces sweet potato puree
    2 eggs
    1 Tbsp. agave syrup
    Black sesame seeds
Directions:
  1. Put oil in 8" square baking pan. Turn toaster oven or real oven to 425 degrees. Place pan in oven while oven preheats. Pay a little attention to the oven as you're mixing up the cornbread. Oil left unattended at high heat: Bad things could happen. 
  2. Mix cornmeal, salt, baking powder & soda, chipotle, paprika, and xanthan together.
  3. Mix goat, potato, eggs, and agave together.
  4. Mix dry and wet stuff together.
  5. Take the pan out of the oven, swirl the oil around a bit, then pour it into the batter. Mix well.
  6. GENTLY fold in the black beans.  If you're too vigorous, the black beans will smoosh and discolor the cornbread. Which could also be nice and disgustingly Halloweenish. But really, it's not what we're going for here. So, do be gentle.
  7. Sprinkle black sesame seeds on top, then bake for about 20 - 25 minutes until the cornbread tests done.
Serve with organic butter. Just don't serve it to Spouse 1.0.


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