Cornbread (cake), but I dont want to fight about it.
06/17
If I’m being honest, I currently make this bread more than almost anything else. It is not spectacular, as spectacles can be exhausting. But when I have no appetite, she is what I crave. In my book, this might be the only certain mark of true love. Sometimes, after I’ve had a bite I whisper to her: “you are a perfect food.”
I realize cornbread is a contentious topic and I’m not throwing my hat in the ring with this one, as it’s more at home in the sphere of polenta tea cakes than in the margin of the cornbread conversation. But it’s important to pay homage to the things that have endured as you’ve run amuck, dipping your toes in different tepid waters, looking for “yourself.”
Maybe, I...am...this...cornbread? Sometimes I wonder.
This was born from a recipe I developed more than a decade ago when I was 18 and dabbling in macrobiotics, hence the conspicuous lack of eggs and butter. It can be 100 different things but is always, most definitely, a comfort.
Below, a scan of the recipe I keep on my fridge under an Elvis magnet.
I am heavy handed with the salt, tend to add a heaping of chopped fruit, and sometimes a bit of cream. You can replace the olive oil with any liquid fat of choice, and so goes with the sweetener (maple is a luxurious sub).
You know- leave out the vanilla, go light on the honey and up the salt, add some crushed garlic and labne, etc.
Do what you want, she will most likely forgive you.
(Bake her in a 9” round)