Corn Bread

A hot-from-the-oven pan of cornbread is an excellent way to elevate a weeknight dinner of chili or soup or really anything. It's a rather lowly baked good that, homemade and warm, adds something special to any meal. 

Traditional cornbread recipes, like this vintage one from the 1969 Dorcas Missionary Circle of the Baptist Church in Pound, Wisconsin, are rather plebeian affairs. Short on sugar and fat, they are nonetheless delicious.  And extremely simple to make, and equally difficult to screw up. It's an excellent addendum to your Thanksgiving table, or crumbled and used as a stuffing base.

While I mostly bake from handwritten recipes, I do love church and school cookbooks, as I think the housewives and church ladies submit their best recipes.

Start by sifting the dry ingredients together.

Stir in the wet ingredients until they're well combined and...

smooth, like this. A spoon works fine -- no need for any modern-day machines.

Pour the batter in a greased pan and smooth until it reaches the edges.

Bake until the top is golden and the edges just begin to come away from the sides of the pan.

Turn out, cut and enjoy.

Production notes: I followed this exactly, but accidentally used half & half in place of the milk (a sad fact I discovered the next morning when I poured my coffee). I baked it for about 20 minutes -- you don't want to overbake cornbread or it will be dry.

Grandmother's Famous Cranberry Bread

Are old recipes better than modern ones?  Is gingerbread made from a 100-year-old recipe tastier and more authentic than one conceived last year in the test kitchen of Saveur?  Many of us share a fascination with the past (culinary and otherwise), viewing what came before through a lens that often obscures any difficulty and struggle. Even though I'm probably guiltier than most, trying to uncover and discover forgotten tastes of years gone by, I do think that what we eat (and what we cook) reflects the era in which we live, much like theater or really, any of the arts, do. But there's something to be said for those recipes that endure, passed down through generations or, in the case of this cranberry bread, disseminated more widely via flea markets and estate and eBay sales.  

Cranberry Bread (Grandmother's Famous) is truly a treasure from the past.  And perfect for the Thanksgiving table, or the morning after.  Cranberries can be frozen (just add frozen to any recipe), so it's a good way to use up any leftover berries. It's fairly simple to make, not overly sweet (typical of older recipes) and really delicious. And it's so festive-looking, a moist yellow cake studded with the bright red berries.

The orange zest and juice and the cranberries give this bread its wonderful flavor profile (though I'm sure grandmother squeezed her own orange juice).

This bread is made rather unconventionally. The butter is cut into the dry ingredients (think pie crust method) which I did in the food processor, and then the wet ingredients are blended in (done in the Kitchen Aide).

Pour into a prepared pan.  I used one of those new-fangled baking sprays, which is a combination of fat and flour. Alternately, simply grease and flour the pan.

Bake longer than you think is necessary, at least an hour. Remove from the oven and let cool somewhat on a wire rack before turning the bread out to finish cooling.

Production notes: I followed this recipe exactly, except I accidentally bought dark rather than light raisins. And I also did not chop the cranberries, a tedious and unnecessary task. To prevent the cranberries and raisins from sinking to the bottom of the batter, lightly flour them before adding. This would be excellent if you substitute the raisins (I am not a fan) with a cup of chopped walnuts.