Sunday, May 16, 2010

sweet potato buttermilk cornbread

I made some a few days ago, and at first, right out of the oven, I didn't think it tasted very good. It was slightly bitter, which I attribute to the sweet potato, and slightly too wet for cornbread, which I attribute to using agave nectar as opposed to granulated sugar. However, day 4 in the life of the sweet potato cornbread seems to bring it to the peak of its existence, much like a wine that needs to settle into of its flavor. Odd.

Anyway, here's what I did.
1 cup flour
1 cup Bob's Red Mill 8 Grain Cereal - good enough substitute for corn meal
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup agave nectar
1 beaten egg
1 cup buttermilk
1-1/2 cup peeled and grated sweet potato.

Pre-heat oven to 425. Mix dry ingredients together. Cut in butter until mix is crumbly. Add wet stuff - everything else. Grease a baking dish that's at least 9x9x2 (I used a round cake pan.) Pour mix in, bake for 20-30 min. Voila!

Notes:

1 - I really enjoy cutting butter into flour. It's knowing that these small bits of butter you're embedding with flour will make tasty, greasy, buttery pockets in the final product. It really feels like you're doing something. Not unlike, say, cleaning out the basement.

2- I think the bitterness at the beginning of the life of my cornbread was perhaps because the sweet potato wasn't cooked enough. Not sure, but I would experiment in the future with grating it finer, or even pre-cooking it and just adding mashed sweet potato to the mix.

3- I sprinkled cinnamon and nutmeg on top after it was almost done baking, but definitely adding those into the mix, or at some point in the process is recommended.

4 - I feel that there is a chocolate version of this somewhere in the ether...chocolate chips, perhaps, or cocoa powder. Mmmmmmm.

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