Coconut lime cornbread and updated regular cornbread

I'm going to be honest and say I've never had better sweet cornbread than my own. I'm going to show you some slight updates that I've made to the recipe through the years. And then I'm going to show you a full-on dessert version with coconut and lime. It won my neighborhood baking competition. I'm just saying. If sweet cornbread is not your thing, that's fine. But it's one of the most requested items from my kitchen. I make it for breakfast on special occasions. This batter is super easy. It's just an egg in a bowl. 1/3 of a cup, 80 mls of a neutral tasting oil. If you don't want to use the highly refined oils, I think avocado oil tastes really nice in this. One cup, 200 g of granulated sugar on top. Yes, this is more cake than bread, and I'm fine with that. Better than fine, actually. Now is a good time to do a preliminary whisk. It's easy to break up the egg and mix it with the oil when you have all this granular material in there for abrasion. Time for a cup, 237 mls of liquid. And I used to use plain milk, but lately I've been using buttermilk. Or actually, this is kafir, which is the Indian equivalent, generally fermented with a slightly different community of microorganisms. But for baking, it's the same stuff. It's thick, mildly tangy milk. It makes baked goods more moist and flavorful. For salt, I'm doing half a teaspoon of kosher, which is a little less than I normally use, and I'll tell you why in just a sec. Time for the dry stuff. One cup of cornmeal. And I recommend using a reasonably fine grind, which should weigh like 150 g for a cup. The coarser cornmeal tends to hurt your teeth in cornbread. It doesn't hydrate enough to soften all the way. A cup 120 g of allpurpose flour. You can make cornbread with just cornmeal, but it won't have any gluten, so it won't be fluffy at all. It won't be able to retain much gas as it bakes. On top of the dry so that it doesn't react with the water prematurely goes one teaspoon of baking powder. And then to neutralize some of the acid in the buttermilk, I'll use a/4 teaspoon of baking soda. When the pH of the batter gets too low, it tends to bake up all gummy and it has trouble browning. The baking soda just raises the pH a bit. And I have for sure found that I get a lighter texture if I leave this for 15 minutes before I bake it to let all the particles hydrate and to get autolyis. That's the water developing the gluten for me. And the way that I force myself to let the batter rest is to wait until it's done before heating up my oven. And I will put my 10-in cast iron pan in there to heat up with the oven. That is key. I used to bake this at 400F, but since getting a good convection oven, I've been adjusting my temperatures down a little to compensate for the improved heat transfer that the fan gives you. And once the oven is up to temperature, I will carefully remove the hot pan and melt a lot of butter in there. If you're not using a Teflon pan, you'll want some extra grease to make sure this releases all the way up the sides. Plus, the butter makes the brown crust taste amazing. This is some fancy French butter sent to me by Wild Grain, sponsor of this video. We obviously love our baked goods around here, and Wild Grain is the first bake from Frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, pastries, cookies, fresh pasta, all your grainy goodies. And again, they're designed to be baked from frozen, which is so easy. We made these croissants Christmas morning, and boy, did that hit. Unlike your typical store-bought baked goods, Wild Grain uses normal ingredients with slow fermentation to develop flavor. The freezing process preserves nutrients and texture. Nobody had to fill this chabatada with dough conditioners to make it last forever on a shelf somewhere. It tastes like real fresh bread because it is. If you want more warm yeasty breads in your life, check out Wild Grain with my link in the description. Use code regusia to get $30 off your first box, plus free croissants for life, if you can believe it. Wildgrain.com/regusia or scan the QR code. Thank you, Wild Grain. Anyway, butter in the hot cast iron. I'm using salted butter because that's what I have, which is why I adjusted the salt in my batter down a little. With this much butter, the salt adds up and you really taste it. If there's a lot of excess butter, you can blot some up. In goes the batter to the hot pan. Preheating the pan helps the crust brown. It helps it to not stick as bad, and it gets you a fluffier bread by helping internal steam build up before everything solidifies. In my oven, it takes about 20 minutes. When it's done, it starts to crack on top and it feels bouncy in the middle rather than squishy. This needs a couple more minutes. You can pierce it with something to see if it comes out clean or you can take its temperature or both. I would pull this at 200FH 180C because it's going to bake a little bit more in the hot pan as it cools. You have to let it cool and solidify in there for 5 10 minutes before turning it out. Give it an aggressive shake to get it released from the bottom. Then you can put a plate or a board on top. Carefully flip it upside down. Yay, we did it. But it's upside down. So, a plate or a cooling rack on top of that and then flip again. I like to let the bottom steam out on the rack so that it doesn't get all soggy. Then you can slice it into wedges or whatever you want. This same recipe works in a smaller pan, by the way. It just takes a little longer to bake, but it would come out taller, which can be nice. So, yeah, this is sweet, but in a way that evokes sweet corn rather than dessert. It's a great side for soup or chili or some such. However, you can make a straightup dessert cornbread. And here is my prize-winning recipe for that. One egg as before. Third of a cup of oil, a cup of sugar. Everything is the same so far. Same cup of buttermilk or kefir. This really helps the inside stay moist cuz cornbread tends to dry out. What we'll do different is we're only going to use 3/4 of a cup of cornmeal, like 110 g. That's to leave room and moisture for the coconut that's coming later. A full cup of flour. As before, this is sweetened shredded coconut. Unsweetened would probably be fine. A/2 cup of this, 40 or 50 g. It's not very dense when shredded. Same/ teaspoon of salt for me because I like noticeable salt in my desserts, but you can leave some of it out if you want. Same teaspoon of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. And this is very optional, but I'm doing a little splash of coconut flavoring. The shredded coconut mostly contributes texture. If you want it to really taste like coconut, you need the concentrated essential oils or whatever is in that bottle. Do not over mix. Just get it smooth and let it sit while heating the pan in the oven. Same temp. Butter that baby. You don't have to use as much if you use a non-stick pan. But honestly, the butter makes a super tasty crust. And I particularly like the salted butter for the dessert version. It balances the sweet icing. Don't be surprised if this batter is a little looser cuz coconut is less absorbent than cornmeal is. Bake as before, about 20 minutes or just until the top feels springy, not squishy. Let solidify a few minutes and then shake hard to release. Turn out to the board. Turn out again to the rack. I definitely use the rack this time because it's good for icing. This is a lime icing. Most of the flavor is going to come from the zest. Plenty of zest in there. Open up the lime and squeeze it all in if you want, but I think that the icing will come out way too sour. I just want like a teaspoon of juice. 1 cup, 120 g, of powdered sugar. And the rest of my liquid I'll get from milk or water rather than lime juice. However much you need to get a glazed texture. No, the lime will not curdle the milk. There's so much sugar to get between the milk proteins and keep them from clumping. I would go for a thinish glaze like this. A thicker one will give you more of a frosting vibe and make the whole thing too sweet. Let the cornbread cool a bit before spilling the glaze over it. Otherwise, the heat will cause it to thin out and then all run off. You can tilt it in different directions to make sure that it spreads over the whole cake. And let's be honest, this is a cake. Excess glaze will just drip through the cooling rack. And I let it go on the counter because it's so easy to wipe up and I need to wipe my counter anyway. Let that glaze solidify before you slice or it'll just smear everywhere when you cut. There you go. Coconut lime sweet cornbread. Winner in the originality category at the neighborhood Labor Day picnic. Thank you very much. It was actually Lauren's idea, so we'll let her eat it. It's >> like do a little dance cut.