Not the kitchen sink, but the seat of the pants

After I have measured the milk, yogurt, egg, and vanilla and beaten them all together is not the time to discover that we only have 86g of wheat flour left in the entire house.

I thought the "there's no plain sugar" situation was bad enough, but I have my emergency jar of vanilla sugar so that was OK. But one cannot make scones without flour!  And one cannot have berry shortcake without some sort of short cake.

So, I improvised.  I had potato flour and stone ground yellow cornmeal; I went with the cornmeal.  I ended up with something a little bit like the sweet "cornbread" common up here, but much less sweet and not at all greasy. I like it enough to save the recipe and  make it again.


Strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries, with vanilla ice cream and a corn... something or other

Recipe after the jump-



I think I'll just call this dessert cornbread. It made 6 rounds about 5in in diameter. They spread quite a bit and I should have spaced them better.  A lined muffin tin would work, too, but this gives them a lot of surface area for a nice crust.

Dessert cornbread
85g white flour  (2/3c)
160g cornmeal  (1 1/3c)
50g sugar (1/4c)
2tsp baking powder
6tbsp chilled butter
1/3c whole milk yogurt
1/3c milk
1 large egg
1 1/2tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 400°F and line a baking tray with parchment paper.

Mix the flour, cornmeal, sugar, and baking powder together and then cut the butter into this mixture as if making pie crust, until the butter is well mixed in and there are only small lumps left.

Beat the liquid ingredients together until well mixed and then stir into the flour/butter mixture. Stir until combined and then drop by the 1/3c-full onto the baking sheet.

Bake about 20min or until golden brown.  Cool for a few minutes on the pan and then move to a wire rack to cool all the way.  If making muffins, check if they're done with a toothpick.


I ended up serving them cut in half with a portion of mixed berries.  There was one request for lightly sweetened yogurt instead of ice cream. Either way is good.  The yogurt is more of a sauce than the ice cream is. 

I think the corn goes best with the blueberries and a bit of ice cream. It's like they have an affinity.  The blackberries didn't shine to their best ability in this context.

The difference between this cornbread and my sour cream scone recipe is simple. It would be 280g of unbleached white flour, and it would be 1/3c of sour cream instead of yogurt. I decided to go with yogurt anyway, and it is a pretty standard substitution.  Other than that, since it's a thicker dough, it would hold its shape to be patted into a rectangle and cut into squares or triangles for baking. Everything else is the same.