baking: does it come easily to you?

lol

2 cups cornmeal
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

2 cups buttermilk/kefir/yogurt/what have you
2 eggs

---

1 turn the oven on full blast
2 put in your skillet

3 beat the eggs
4 combine eggs with the buttermilk
5 combine the dry ingredients
6 now mix all together

7 take your skillet out and put on a burner to keep it hot
8 add plenty of bacon fat or 3 tbsps of another oil to the hot skillet, and make sure it gets nice and hot in the skillet

9 pour your batter into the hot skillet
10 put skillet in the oven
11 reduce heat to 400F
12 bake for about 20 minutes

eat immediately if poss!

I had this very *earthy* American cooking youtube of how to annihilate a beef brisket in a pressure cooker with skillet cooked cornbread, potatoes, beef-gravy and carrots on my youtube history and it has been deleted from history for some reason. I only did my own version of the beef brisket part of the vid which was probably appalling on a healthy eating level, but also good at the same time. I generally do the same thing but do it to the Yorkshire pudding cooking regs where it is somewhat fluffier!

that recipe looks good Tracer Hand

love to see a zero sugar cornbread recipe

For Dorie Greenspan's lemon spice cake, the recipe doesn't specify how much zest. Does that mean basically all of the lemon's peel?

― Kaliningrad Oberst (Leee), Wednesday, September 30, 2020 7:41 PM (fifty-seven minutes ago)

is it too late? the answer is "sure"

uh, not the entire peel, forgive me if you knew that. just the yellow part!

Actually that's useful to know! And I haven't gotten the ingredients yet. Basically, the whole lemon has to look a bit naked?

yes you just scrape the yellow then move on to get more yellow, you want as little white as possible. if it doesn't say an amount i would say it's "to taste," if you use some reasonable amount you won't ruin it. probably one lemon or half a lemon.

Thanks, tracer!

yw!

the key is to get coarse cornmeal, stoneground if you can. in the uk i get indian head which is fine. bob’s red mill is great but hard to get over here.

I somehow have only just heard of Alison Roman but I do believe that my cake aspirations will have to wait for this first: https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/salted-butter-and-chocolate-chunk-shortbread

i'm just gonna say you're lucky

i'm addicted to making porridge bread.

https://i.imgur.com/WTkQJtY.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/250gT8I.jpg

was gonna ask you about this! i made my third loaf today. i'm ready to move into more different grains and seeds because that's the kind of bread i like. do you just add cooked oatmeal to it and amend the water and flour ratios accordingly? i'm learning this is more forgiving than i thought.

yep just good old cooked oats! i use 50g oats and 200g water per loaf. cook it for about 10 minutes and then let it cool. add it once you're ready to mix everything together for the bulk fermentation. i add about 20g of linseeds (or 40g for two loaves) to the porridge while it cooks. they swell a little and add some glutinous properties to the porridge to help it bind with the dough. and they add some nice crunch and flavour to the bread too. it will add a bit of hydration so you might want to knock your other water down just a little.

it is sooo soft inside and i feel like it lasts so much longer.

that looks amazing

I made Dorrie Greenspan's Lemon Spice cake, and it did not turn out well. Not much rise, tough outer crust, too dense for a sponge, and not much lemon taste. I realized that I used too little stevia (I can never seem to calculate it correctly), but I don't imagine that it led to the density or dryness.

did you use all stevia? no sugar at all?

Correct, just stevia and no sugar, which hasn't been an issue in most of my other bakes when I use the correct amount. (I get the feeling the baking gods are about to smite me.)

i have never baked with a sugar substitute but i thought that it *would* affect rise and texture to substitute. sugar does things with moisture that stevia may not. probably doesn't affect the lemon taste issue.

Yeah sugar is v important for texture. Let's not blame this on Dorie is all I'm saying.

I always assume that a failed bake is my fault!

I do want to try the lemon spice cake again eventually, probably by doubling the spices and lemon juice AND zest, and making sure to calculate the correct stevia amount this time, and measuring the butter by weight instead of using the tablespoon markers on the wrapper. I might make sure to use real heavy cream for this future attempt, since I used almond milk + olive oil the first time.

But for this weekend, I'm going to try that carrot cake. Reviewing the recipe, it looks idiot proof, which I will put to the test.

my puregro cornmeal coarse polenta has arrived, got some buttermilk arriving later. I'm going to do some cornbread this weekend as per Tracer's recipe, not using bacon grease on my skillet though that's one step too far for me!

awesome! please let me know how it turns out. that's my family's recipe. my dad always liked it because it was very simple - 2 of most things.

something i've discovered when making with polenta - the polenta really soaks up the liquid quickly, so do the mixing of wet & dry ingredients no more than a couple of minutes before dumping into your skillet, otherwise you'll end up with a kind of sandy bowl of polenta hunks.

ah thanks for that tip I'll remember that

I'm going to be serving my cornbread with roast potatoes, sausages and onion gravy and steamed greens. Not sure if that is a bit doing it wrong but I'm treating it like it's like a yorkshire pudding finger type food on a separate plate that you can dip and enjoy basically - which seems right!

Idiot proof indeed!

sounds amazing calz. yeah i usually slather mine in butter but my wife will use as a vehicle for essentially anything.

I'm finding that a lot of American recipes use oil or e.g. oil and yoghurt instead of butter, which is far more common in the UK. Is there a reason for this? I have made a few cakes from an American recipe book and can often taste the oil and miss the delicious buttery taste you get in standard British recipes. Is there a formula for subbing in butter instead of oil?

what book is it? i guess america had a period of time where we loved unsaturated fats, margarine, etc. my mom used to have margarine and jam on a roll for breakfast every day in the 90s.

i don't know whether there is a formula. i have used a king arthur recipe, i believe for corn bread, that allowed a 1:1 substitution. cake is more risky because it requires more exact measurements, and butter contains some water (like 15%?), and milk solids. a coffee cake would probably be an ok place to experiment. if i was doing this i would substitute melted and cooled butter* and add a little extra, then take away a small amount of the liquid. i may be confusing myself with the math here but i think divide the amount of oil by .85** to get the amount of butter you need. then subtract a corresponding amt of water/milk (butter*.15) from the recipe.

*this is only where the recipe wants liquid oil, of course
**here's the other problem, this number varies by brand and i think you guys have slightly fattier butter than we do

i see newer baking blogger (idk what else to call them) recipes using oil i think bc maybe it’s perceived as “healthier” & ppl are more dairy averse & everyone seems to love reinventing the wheel

but any good US baking recipe should call for butter
imo if they are telling you to use oil ...time to find a better recipe!

the only time i used oil for a cake & liked it was a stephanie alexander carrot cake

find a better recipe may sadly be better advice then doing these calculations

unless you need to sub oil for dietary reasons, just avoid altogether imo

um, i meant "than" lol

The book was by Irvin Lin, 'Marbled, Swirled and Layered', but I misremembered - it had butter AND olive oil. I tried this recipe today that was oil & yoghurt https://www.sweetestmenu.com/cinnamon-apple-cake and I'm sure I used to make some kids' muffins from a blog that was similar. But sounds like this isn't the norm!

I mainly bake Mary Berry type cakes, lots of creaming of butter & sugar.
The apple cake was good btw, needed a lot longer baking time tho and possibly needed more cinnamon and the apple sank to the bottom.

I love olive oil polenta cake, but can't think of other cakes I've made that have called for oil instead of butter

I’ve looked at multiple recipes for it but my friend’s instructions were the most helpful (from a now-defunct blog, but one with a lot of great archived recipes)

http://www.domesticdaddy.net/2015/05/23/olive-oil-polenta-cake/

oh ok i see, a lot of quick bread and muffin recipes use sour cream so that's what the yogurt thing is, people don't want to be using sour cream

VG i got the dorie greenspan baking book btw. i need to be exercising more :(

:D yay! dorie rules

my current fave is her mocha walnut bundt cake its so good

https://smittenkitchen.com/2007/07/double-chocolate-layer-cake/ is my go-to chocolate cake recipe and I guess its the oil that makes it very light and delicious and not heavy like some choc cake recipes I've tried. Getting buttermilk in the UK is weirdly hard so I just sub in yoghurt and it works wonderfully.

I just assume that calling for yoghurt/sour cream/buttermilk is just wanting some acid for the bicarb to react with, yes? Like the best pancake recipe is a buttermilk recipe (where I also sub in yog) uses bicarb and baking powder so you get bubbles twice.

I shared this on Slack but here's my recent vegan chocolate cake with a sweet potato-based icing, it is definitely scrummy: https://photos.app.goo.gl/BoU3CU5U62CYA9kt6

And the recipe, which is pretty simple: https://www.loveandlemons.com/vegan-chocolate-cake/

https://i.imgur.com/Bb0LCDX.jpg

looks really good!!

It is! I had to put it in an airtight container because otherwise, I'd be hit with this huge smell of chocolate goodness every time I opened the fridge and wouldn't be able to concentrate on anything else lol.

i usually do that anyway, so that my bake doesnt take on weird “fridge smells”

i made the muffin cake from dorie's book a few weeks ago. so good. i might make it again tomorrow because i got a big bag of apples and i just want to eat it again. i like how it is rough textured with the oats and nuts and stuff, i don't like things to be too cake-like. plus you can pretend it's nutritious and not full of butter.