This week has been crazy busy and we've been trying our best to keep our meals simple so we won't be tempted by easy fast food. This week has included meals of chicken spaghetti, homemade corn dogs and fries, catfish poboys, and bison steak and grilled corn. All of these recipes have been pretty easy, taken less than 30 minutes (minus the time it took to bake the poboy bread,) and most of the veggies were from the farmer's market or our garden. :)
So it's Sunday morning and we have a ton of stuff to do before my Dad, Kim, and Maya come to visit next weekend. So I tried to do another "easy" recipe for breakfast this morning. And blueberry cornbread was the winner this morning.
What you'll need:
Ingredients:
2 large eggs
1cup buttermilk
1/4 cup melted butter
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/3 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 salt
1 cup blueberries
1 tbsp honey
olive oil
Items needed:
2 large bowls
whisk
12" cast iron pan
spatula
And if you're lucky, two eager kiddos to help. (Explains the lack of pictures, sorry.)
Preheat oven to 375F
Whisk the wet ingredients together (milk, butter, and eggs)
Mix the dry ingredients together(flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking soda, salt.)
Add the dry mix and wet mix together.
Once the mixture is consistent, fold in the honey and the blueberries
Meanwhile, put enough olive oil in the cast iron to coat the bottom and sides.
Heat on the stove top on medium heat for 1-2 minutes
Add the cornbread to the pan
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean
Let it cool for 10 minutes
It looked like it was underdone, but it was perfect.
Yum!Yum!Yum!!!
A bonus in all this, very few dishes, and you don't wash the cast iron! Yeah for me! Now to the laundry. Ugh.
The last three days have probably been our worst three days in a long long time. A quick example of our meals and snacks have been: pop tarts (how do we still have these in our pantry?), fig newtons, angel hair carbonara (leftovers from going out to eat with my mom, "Granny," ) "organic" cheese crackers (these things are horrible!), m&m's and fajita's at Mi Rancho. Go ahead and throw a couple of cane sugar dr.pepper's in there for good measure. And it been like this for three days. We even had James Coney Island today. There's nothing worse than canned cheese. I literally feel sick when I think about all the food I have consumed in the last three days. But I bought a new cookbook and we're getting back on track. At least I feel better about it all.
Here's our baking adventures this week...
First, I tried making sweet bread this last Sunday. I'm not putting the recipe, because it didn't work. If it does in the future, I'll post it.
Outside it looks amazing, but if you look inside, it didn't cook all the way through. *sighs*
So Chef Blackheart tried to make white bread. He thought I might need a break from the bread making duties.
Here is his first attempt.
Again, it looks good on the outside, but it didn't rise properly, and it was hard as a rock.
Then, Wednesday, Chef Blackheart surprised me with the most beautiful loaf of bread I've ever seen, and it tasted amazing!
So, what did we learned this week?
1. Sweet Bread was not meant to be made in large loaves. But in small rolls
2. When making bread with dry live yeast, stir the yeast well to make sure to break open the outer shell.
3. If your bread dough doesn't rise properly, throw it away and try again. No use in going further. It's not going to come out correctly.
4. You don't need a bread machine.
5. Try try try again, you'll get it and you'll be glad you did!
