GF Marie Callendar's Style Cornbread - Take 1

Melanie informed me that Gluten-Free Mike had been lamenting the loss of Marie Callender cornbread in his life.  I understand. It is indeed a lamentable loss.

And, unlike Spouse 1.0, Gluten-Free Mike can't like the dense, corny cornbread made in cast iron skillets.  No, to Gluten-Free Mike, "cornbread" has only one definition: Marie Callender.

So, what could I say, other than, "Challenge accepted!!"

My first thought was to try incorporating corn and honey into my garbanzo bread. I rejected that idea before even getting home to my mixing bowl.  Instead, I reached for my iPad and started googling. Surely someone had done a GF copycat recipe.  They had. I tried it, and it was good in the way that an over-sweetened box of Jiffy cornbread would be good.

As in, not good enough.

I thought back to the first time I had Marie's bread. I splurted, "This isn't cornbread! It's cake!"

It took me many Sunday lunches of steamed vegetables to accept the idea that having a square of dessert with your steamed vegetables wasn't a bad thing.  And, many more Sunday lunches to come to love the stuff.

So, back to Gluten-Free Mike and the quest for cornbread.

If Marie's is more cake than bread, then I need to understand the ratio differences between quickbread and cake. Fortunately, Spouse 1.0 got me the Ratio book last year for Christmas.

I decided to try something half way between a quickbread and a cake. And, it worked!

Unlike a lot of my recipes, this one is all about specific ingredients and correct technique.  You'll dirty more things when you make this.  But, it is so very worth it.

I haven't heard yet whether the bread passes the Gluten-Free Mike test. But, since everyone else likes it, here it is: The bread and its back story.
Since this is half way between a bread and a cake, use a cake making method.  First, you cream the butter and sugar in your stand mixer until it is very, very creamy.  Scrape the bowl a time or two while it is mixing.

Cream butter and sugar

While the fat and sugar are creaming, prepare the dry ingredients.  Grind the cornmeal in a clean coffee grinder or a high power blender until the cornmeal is warm.  If using the coffee grinder, do it in two stages. Add all dry ingredients to a small mixing bowl and whisk well to combine.

Mix dry ingredients together

Once the fat and sugar is well creamed, add the eggs and mix until they are well incorporated. Don't over mix. You don't want the eggs to get tough. Scrape the bowl.

 



Add eggs

Add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture in 2 or three stages, mixing only well enough to incorporate and scraping the bowl a couple of times.





Add dry ingredients

Add the clabbered milk and mix just until incorporated. Gently scrape the bowl once while mixing. The batter will be fluffy and beautiful. 



Add clabbered milk

 

Gently pour the fluffy, beautiful batter into a well-greased 8" pan.  Wet your fingers and gently smooth the batter so that it is evenly distributed. 



Bake and enjoy.  Of course, you'll want to mix up some honey butter to go with this. 

Pamela's Marie-Style Cornbread

Ingredients:

1-2 tsp organic apple cider vinegar
4 ounces goat milk
2 ounces butter, softened but not melted
2 ounces Spectrum organic shortening
4 ounces (1/2 cup) organic sugar
2 large eggs
3 ounces Arrowhead Mills Organic Gluten Free Cornmeal*
3 ounces Authentic Foods Classic Gluten Free Blend**
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp xanthan gum

Directions:

1. Thoroughly grease an 8" square baking pan and preheat oven to 350 (f).
2. Pour 1-2 tsp apple cider vinegar into cup.
3. Add goat milk to weigh 4 ounces. Set aside to clabber.
4. Weigh butter, shortening, and sugar into the mixing bowl and set it to creaming. Scrape bowl periodically.***
5. Grind cornmeal in a clean coffee grinder or a high powered blender.
6. Add dry ingredients to a small mixing bowl and whisk to incorporate.
7. Add eggs to butter-sugar mixture. Mix just enough to thoroughly incorporate. Scrape bowl once while mixing.
8. Add dry ingredients to the butter-sugar mixture in at least two stages.  Mix just enough to incorporate. Scrape 2-3 times while mixing.
9. Add clabbered milk, mixing just enough to incorporate.  Scrape bowl once while mixing.
10. Pour mixture into the prepared baking pan.  Wet fingers and smooth batter evenly in the pan.
11. Bake 350 for about 25-30 minutes, until toothpick tests done.

Notes

* I love Bob's Red Mill products, and I love the course grind of their cornmeal for other things.  For this bread, you really do need the finer grind of Arrowhead Mills.

** Authentic Foods grinds their brown rice flour more finely than other brands I've used.  This is important for the fluffiness factor. 

*** Be sure to turn your mixer off and unplug it while scraping the bowl. 

Savory Garbanzo Bread

Once upon a time, I had most of the ingredients for Chickpea and Chives Waffles, but no waffle iron.  No problem: Waffles and pancakes are sort of the same thing.  So, I decided to make pancakes.

Got part way into the process, and wondered: What would it take to make chickpea and chives bread?

Waffles get some oil from the waffle iron and some from whatever you put on the waffle. So, bread needs more oil.  And, bread probably needs more binder than waffles. So, maybe an extra egg.

I didn't have chives, but that's OK.  I had other things to provide flavor.

And, I really prefer to call them garbanzos.   So, that's how chickpea and chives waffles turned into...

Savory Garbanzo Bread

Ingredients

90 grams garbanzo flour
8 ounces warm water (about 120 degrees f.)
1.5 tsp Italian herb blend
1.5 tsp dehydrated minced onion
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground pepper (Really, I have no idea.  Just grind a bunch in.)
12 grams honey or agave syrup
45 grams oil
3/4 tsp xanthan gum
3 eggs
3/4 tsp xanthan gum
60 g. gluten-free flour blend (Trader Joe's blend is fine.)
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
Optional: Smoked paprika and/or pecorino romano cheese

Directions

1. In a medium mixing bowl, stir together water and garbanzo flour.  Let sit for about 20 minutes.
2. Grease a 9" square baking pan.  Preheat oven or toaster oven to 350.
3. Add herbs and spices, honey, and oil.
4. Add eggs and whisk until well-combined.
5. Whisk in xanthan gum.
6. Whisk in flour blend.
7. Add baking powder and soda, then whisk thoroughly.
8. Top with paprika and/or pecorino romano if desired.
9. Bake at 350 for 12-18 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Play with the seasoning.  The photos below are of the bread sans topping and seasoned with dill, onion, parsley, and garlic.

Adventures in Leftover Relish, Part 2

Having mostly gotten rid of the cran-apple-orange relish, I was still faced with a tub of the yummy but soon-to-be-fermenting cranberry salsa.

No tips online for using that up.

And, oh, by the way, the avocados I'd bought to use on the Thanksgiving salad but forgot to use were sitting on the counter, turning very, very ripe.

avocado. cranberry salsa. avocado. cranberry salsa.  hmm...

Spouse 1.0 used to love the cranberry salsa at La Salsa.  He'd eat it on food that had avocado in it.  The food might be soft tacos, which were made with corn masa, which is kinda like cornmeal, which is kinda like blue cornmeal.

Sounds like blue cornbread to me!

Except, with green avocado, blue-gray cornmeal, and cranberry-red salsa, what color would it really be?

Was I insane? Desperate? I don't know. But, Spouse ate it and liked it. And, coworker Nick said, "Yummm" when he ate it. So, maybe it's not quite as weird as it looks.

Nah, it's pretty weird.  I think I'll need to keep thinking about ways to use up leftover cranberry salsa.

Ack. Bad lighting.  It actually looked a lot rosier than this.

Applesauce Blue Cornbread (Gluten Free, of course)

The cornbread obsession continues.  Today it's Applesauce Blue Cornbread. Sorry, no pictures.  But then, we're talking blue cornmeal.  Not exactly the most photogenic member of the cornmeal family.

The starting point for today's recipe came from one of Carol Fenster's books.  But, by the time you turn yellow meal to blue, sugar to maple syrup, canola oil to grapeseed, milk to applesauce, and measures to weights -- and said weights might not round trip to Fenster's original measurements.... (Let's not get into the whole your-mileage-may-vary nature of measuring!)  Then, you throw in stuff like cranberries, pecans, walnuts, and vanilla....  I guess at some point I get to call it my own thing, don't I?

So, here it is:  Applesauce Blue Cornbread with Cranberries and Nuts.  My own thing, sort of. Changes from Fenster's ingredients in blue.

Dry stuff:

·         1 ¼ cups blue cornmeal (120 g)

·         1 cup GF Flour Blend of choice (~124 g)

·         2 teaspoons baking powder

·         1.5 teaspoons xanthan gum

·         1 teaspoon salt

Wet stuff:

·         ⅓ cup maple syrup

·         2 large eggs, lightly beaten

·         5.5 oz applesauce

·         3.5 oz milk of choice

·         ⅓ cup grapeseed oil

·         ¼ tsp vanilla

Add-ins:

·         1/3 cup nuts (pecans and walnuts)

·         1/3 cup chopped dried cranberries

·         Extra nuts for topping (opt.)

Directions

1.     Preheat oven to 350˚F. Generously spray an 8- or 9-inch square pan. Set aside.

2.     In small bowl, whisk dry ingredients together until well blended.

3.     In medium bowl, whisk wet ingredients until blended.

4.     Mix dry stuff into wet stuff and whisk until blended. Stir in the nuts and cranberries.

5.     Pour into prepared pan and top with nuts, if desired.

6.     Bake until top is firm and edges are lightly browned, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in the pan on a wire rack before cutting. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature. Serves 12 - 16.

Applecado Bread (Gluten free, of course)

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of Roben Ryberg's books, especially You Won't Believe It's Gluten-Free.  And, a sane person might wonder, "Well, if you love Ryberg's recipes so much, why do you keep changing them???"

Good question.  All I can say is, there's something in me that must explore. Experiment. Try new (aka, "weird") things.  I just must.

Ask my sister. She's the one who was traumatized by a chocolate mint birthday cake when she was a child.  She recalls it being very minty.  It might explain why neither of us is much of a fan of mint these days.  It was not a successful experiment.

But, some experiments are.  Take, for instance, applecado bread.  This one is based heavily on a Ryberg recipe, so you know I'm starting with something good. And, I'm including avocado.  Also something good. And goat milk, ginger, cloves, bourbon vanilla, and more cinnamon.  All very good things.  As my sister-in-law says, "When you put good things together, you get a good thing."

Applecado bread: It's a good thing.

Wet ingredients:

• 6 ounces organic, unsweetened applesauce
• 100 grams organic sugar
• 2.6 ounces avocado (a little less than one small one)
• 1 ounce goat milk
• 2 organic eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla

Dry ingredients:

• 150 grams brown rice flour
• 1 tbsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp xanthan gum
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon plus an extra shake or two
• 1/8 tsp ginger, slightly rounded
• 1/8 tsp cloves
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

Topping:

• 1/3 to 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions:

1. Spray an 8" baking pan with coconut oil spray, then sprinkle a little almond meal on the bottom.  Or, line the pan with parchment paper.  Preheat oven to 350 (f)
2. Mix the wet ingredients in a medium mixing bowl until everything is nice and fluffy and uniformly green. I used my stick blender.
3. Whisk dry ingredients together thoroughly in a small mixing bowl.
4. Gently fold the dry into the wet until everything is nicely incorporated.  The batter will be fluffy and beautiful -- in a green sort of way.
5. Pour batter into the baking pan, smooth out a little, and top with pecans.  Gently press the pecans in so they'll stay put.  
6. Bake at 350 (f) for about 30 minutes, until the house smells lovely and a toothpick test tells you the bread done.

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.

I don't know what it is bread

Lately I've been obsessed with making variations of the Cherokee Bean Bread recipe on the War Eagle Mill web site.  (http://www.wareaglemill.com/recipes/cherokeebeanbread/)

The latest variations have involved using blue cornmeal, black beans, and green chili peppers.  But, today, I had some magnificently aromatic sage from Grebar Farm. So, what if I made the blue cornbread with sage instead of chilis? 

Well, that means I should probably use white beans.

And, if you're going to use sage, then you should definitely add fresh parsley, rosemary, and thyme. Or dried thyme, since I didn't have fresh.  And, some ground black pepper.

And, if you're going to do all that, then you should sauté a little carrot, onion, and celery for extra flavor.

And, if you're going to add all those extra vegies, then you probably need an extra egg and a pinch of xanthan gum to help bind it.  And maybe an extra pinch of baking powder, just because.

But, OH NO!!!  I only have about 70 grams of blue cornmeal, and the bag of blue cornmeal in the freezer turned out to be brown rice flour.  And the bread (or whatever it may be) is now half made!!!

Deep breath.  Millet flour.  I've been needing to use that up anyway, and it has something of a corn-ish taste.  Yellow cornmeal.  Spouse shouldn't have it, but it's nowhere near the top of his no-no list.  And, since it's organic...

And, with all that extra stuff, it's probably a good idea to use just a splash more oil than the recipe calls for.

So... Is it a bread? A pudding?  A stuffing substitute?  I have no idea what to call it.  I just hope that Spouse calls it, "It's good. I like it."