Hot Honey Cornbread

Cornbread (2x):
1 stick of butter, browned
1 cup organic cornmeal
1 cup pastry flour (or ¾ cup AP flour and 1/4 cup cake flour)
1.5 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs
1 1/4 cup of heavy cream
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
3 tablespoons hot honey

Hot Honey and Candied Habanero (2x): 
1 cup raw honey
1 serrano, seeded, thinly sliced

1 1/3 cup sour cream (recipe below or use store-bought) 
 

1. Place a rack in the center of your oven and preheat to 400 degrees.
2. Bring 1 thinly sliced serrano pepper and 1 cup of honey just to a slight simmer in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Reduce heat to low and let cook 1 hour to infuse. Let it cool for 30 minutes. Remove the candied serrano and reserve for garnish.
3. If you’ve never browned butter, it‘s a relatively simple maneuver. Chop the butter and melt it over medium heat in your 10-inch cast-iron skillet. The butter will foam, the solids will separate, and then they will brown. When the butter starts smelling of roasted hazelnuts, it’s ready.
4. While the butter is browning, make your sour cream. In a mason jar, mix 1 ¼ cup of heavy cream with a tablespoon of fresh lemon juice. Put the lid on the jar and shake it up. Tadaaa! Sour cream.
5. In a large bowl mix together the cornmeal, pastry flour, salt, and baking powder. In a second large bowl beat together the sour cream and raw honey. Take the brown butter pan off the heat and transfer all but two tablespoons of the butter to the sour cream mixture. Scramble the eggs and add them in.
6. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture and fold lightly just until a batter forms. Cut down through the center of the two mixtures and bring the sour cream mixture back up to the top. Go down-across-up-and-over then turn the bowl. This ensure a tender crumb.
7. Swirl the cast iron skillet to cover the bottom and sides in butter. Add the batter. Smooth out the top and bake for twenty minutes. The cornbread is ready when the top is a light golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Make sure you take it out of the oven before it starts to pull away from the pan.
8. Drizzle the honey over cornbread. Pipe sour cream dots using a plastic baggie with the corner snipped off.
9. Garnish with candied serrano.

Wrap leftovers tightly in wax paper and store in an airtight container for up to two days at room temperature and up to one week refrigerated.

Be mindful of the quality of your ingredients. In the US it’s perfectly legal to sell GMO cornmeal and call it all-natural. It’s also OK to blend honey with corn syrup and food coloring and call it Grade A and Organic.

Link: www.zestfest.net