Corn Bread

Corn bread is something I don’t often get, and really don’t remember trying at all though my mom said she used to make it for me when I was younger so I decided that I wanted to try making a batch on my own. My parents were telling me about this amazing corn bread they used to get at a restaurant with jalapeños in it which sounds good to me because I love spicy but I decided first I wanted to get a basic recipe down.

 

This recipe turned out to be sooo yummy! It’s sweet and moist, I must say it was almost like a pound cake and was just perfect smothered in butter. When I pulled it out of the oven no one could wait to eat it so we had it warm with melted butter and it was delicious just like that, but I also had some the next morning and it was just as incredible cold.

 

This must be one of the simplest recipes I’ve ever made, takes 5-10 minutes to put together then you just pop it in the oven. The given time in the oven worked perfectly for me each time I made it so you should need to worry about more or less time in the oven unless you use a different size pan.

 

Once baked it’s my preference to cut once down the middle then in the other direction in about  inch wide slices, of course then you need a pad of butter to semi melt on top leaving just a little layer of un-melted butter to stay cool in contrast to the warm sweet bread.

 

 

Ingredients

 

·         ½ cup unsalted butter

·         2/3 cup sugar

·         2 eggs

·         1 cup buttermilk (I use half milk and half sour cream because they're more readily on hand)

·         ½ cup cornmeal

·         1 cup all-purpose flour

·         ½ t baking soda

·         ½ t salt

 

Directions

1.      Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and generously grease an 8” square baking dish

2.      Melt butter in a medium sized  saucepan

3.      Remove melted butter from heat and stir in the sugar using a whisk. Quickly add eggs and beat until well blended.

4.      Combine buttermilk with baking soda and stir into pan. (Side note: do not mix these two ingredients before starting to melt butter. The baking soda and acidic buttermilk will react immediately to create CO2, and if mixed too early, you will end up with buttermilk that has doubled in volume and flat cornbread.)

5.      Stir in cornmeal, flour and salt until well blended. Pour in to prepared dish.

6.      Bake about 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Perfect Pumpkin Pie

Pumpkin pie is that perfect traditional autumn dessert, a must do every year. As much as baking your own pumpkin will always give you the greatest pie I must say that this simple recipe took me by surprise. Pumpkin pie is a delicate recipe that can be good, or it can be bad, but this recipe happens to have the perfect balance in spices, pumpkin and cream that leaves you the perfect tasting pumpkin pie. It doesn't have an overpowering spice taste, while maintaining that fall flavour, an ingredient in this pie that I absolutely love is the maple syrup.

Over the years my mom has become skeptical of pumpkin pie because she doesn't like the overpowering spice taste but this recipe even won her over, I made it another 4 times after the first and it was quickly finished each and every time. I love topping it with some whipped cream and an extra sprinkle of cinnamon for authenticity. Absolutely delicious and the perfect comfort food after a cool afternoon raking leaves.

One thing that I noticed is there's always a little extra filling, so when all your filling doesn't fit in the pie shell don't think you've done something wrong, just discard the extra (or eat it like my friend does when she makes it with me ;) and it'll come out just fine.

I also eliminated the cloves from the recipe because I find it more pleasant without but that's up to your taste so I will list it below incase that is a flavour you would like to add to yours. I find it quite nice to grind your own nutmeg if you have it on hand, otherwise already powdered works just fine!

Ingredients

• 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves (I leave this out, I find it an overpowering spice)
• dash salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 (15oz) can pumpkin puree (I only found 14 oz cans and even with thay you may have a little filling left)
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup 35% cream
• 1 unbaked 8 inch deepdish pie shell (make sure it's deepdish or the filling won't fit!)
• Freshly whipped cream to top (or spray whip)

You can make your own whipped cream with 35% cream whipped until stiff with icing sugar to taste, generally you don't want too much sugar in whipped cream, use powdered sugar, granulated will make a grainy whipped cream.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F
2. Combine spices and sugar
3. In a seperate bowl combine pumpkin, maple syrup and vanilla, stir in eggs, spice mixture and cream
4. Pour into pie shell and bake for 15 minutes, reduce oven heat to 350 degrees F and bake for 1 1/2 hours

I like to refrigerate until completely cool before eating!

Glazed Lemon Pound Cake

For a while I've been wanting to make a pound cake, and lemon is one of my favourite flavours in baking along with the amazing citrus smell throughout the house while you're baking with it. I found this recipe on Pinterest and knew it was the one I wanted to use when I saw that there's two lemons worth of rind in the cake and even more in the frosting. The lemon juice makes the cake moist while the lemon zest gives you that refreshing lemony flavour.

The only downside of this cake is simply waiting for it to bake while your mouth waters! I have a family of four, I made it at 6:30 in the evening and the whole cake was devoured by 7:30 the next morning, needless to say it was a successful recipe.

There wasn't any hassle involved in this recipe, I put it together quite quickly without an complicated steps, the only thing I needed to change is that the recipe asked for a 10" loaf pan where I only had a 6" the batter fit just fine though next time I will put a tray underneath because it did bubble over just a little with the size of my pan.

Ingredients

For the Cake

• 2 Eggs
• 1 cup Vanilla Greek Yogurt (I just used original yogurt)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• zest of 2 lemons
• 4 tbs. freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• A pinch salt

For the Icing

• 2 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
• 3 tbs. freshly squeezed lemon juice (plus water until icing is smooth enough for you)
• 1 lemon zest

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 10" bread pan 
2. Mix wet ingredients and sugar in a large bowl, mix dry ingredients then combine into wet mixture. Mix until well blended.
3. Pour batter into greased pan and bake for 40 minutes or until golden brown. (because my pan was smaller but deeper it took an extra 10 minutes or so, bake until a toothpick comes out with moist crumbles attached)
4. While the cake is baking and cooling, mix icing ingredients until they are at a smooth, drizzling consistency. Drizzle over your cooled cake and enjoy!