Cornbread

• portionen: 6 loaves or 10” skillet
• aktive zeit: 1 hour

Zutaten

200g butter, unsalted

450g corn, frozen

80g heavy cream

45g milk, whole

83g egg(s)

123g cake flour

115g Isomalt

80g cornmeal, medium grind

45g sugar

5g salt, kosher

2.3g baking powder

1.3g baking soda

Anweisungen

1. Preheat oven to 374 °F / 190 °C.

2. Melt butter on high heat in a heavy-bottomed pot. Add the frozen corn, scraping the bottom of the pot continuously to prevent scorching. Cook until golden brown.

3. In a blender, blend corn-and-butter mixture. Add cream and milk. Blend on high until smooth. Add the eggs and continue blending until well mixed.

4. Mix remaining dry ingredients in a medium bowl.

5. Transfer corn purée to the bowl of dry ingredients. Use a rubber spatula to mix thoroughly.

6. Coat small bread pans or cast iron skillet with butter. If using small bread pans, dust with flour. Remove excess flour by tapping each pan against the counter. Add batter to pans.

7. Bake to core temperature of 194 °F / 90 °C, about 15 minutes.

8. If using bread tins, carefully remove the bread from the pans while still hot, and place on cooling rack. This way, the bread will develop more of a crust.

9. Serve warm, with honey butter (see recipe).

Notizen

What do we love the most about cornbread? That lovely, golden-brown exterior combined with the crumbly-yet-still-moist interior? The little puff of steam that escapes when you break a piece apart? The gentle sweetness of the corn? It’s too tough to call, really, so this recipe amplifies all of those qualities to create something extraordinary and ready to be slathered with butter.

Cornbread can be broken into northern and southern styles; southern-style is a lovely thing in its own right—savory, with a moist crumb and crispy crust—while ours is an almost brownielike riff on the sweeter northern style. To make it, we rely on a clever selection of ingredients. The keys are frozen corn (because freezing corn as soon as it’s picked keeps its sugars from converting into starches), cream for moisture, and isomalt, a sugar alcohol that’s not too sweet. Grandma might wrinkle her nose at that last one, but it keeps the cornbread incredibly tender.

We also use tiny loaf pans, which, along with being incredibly cute, create more surface area, allowing for more contrast between the exterior and interior in every bite. (Cupcake tins will work well too.) Finally, we use a thermometer to check the cornbread’s internal temperature at the end of baking. If Grandma wrinkles her nose at that, just tell her it’s a twenty-first-century cake tester. Then ask her to quit hogging the butter.