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You can't catch me

Lately, I've been thinking about (and eating) cornbread. It goes so well with chili and various other messes o' beans. It is so easy to dress up. Throw in a few pine nuts and some fresh rosemary and suddenly it's not poverty cooking, it's cucina povera!

And then I ate some gingersnaps and starting wondering what would turn my cornbread recipe into gingerbread. Turns out, my cornbread doesn't go there, but I did find, in a huge collection of gingerbread recipes, a WWI-era recipe for cornmeal gingerbread. I've been fiddling with it ever since. Those old recipes assume quite a bit of knowledge. No pan size, no baking temperature, no nothing. But I have done it all for you! The experiments generally turned out well, as witnessed by the general NOM-NOM-NOM reception by Oz and various friends. And me. Like, "Is this gingerbread dry?" NOM-NOM. "Hmm. Let me try another piece."

Cornmeal Gingerbread

1 cup cornmeal OR 3/4 cup corn masa
1 cup wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 to 4 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 cup buttermilk (or milk, but buttermilk is better)
1 cup molasses
2 tablespoons oil, or melted butter or shortening (butter is my favorite)
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350 °F. Butter an 8 by 8 inch baking dish.

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients, either by sifting them together or stirring them gently with a fork.

In another bowl, beat the egg. Beat the melted butter into the egg. When the butter is evenly mixed and somewhat emulsified by the yolk, stir in the molasses and then the buttermilk. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry. Stir until just blended and pour into buttered dish.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

The resulting cake is very moist and flavorful. Goes great with coffee, would probably go great with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream if it lasted long enough for us to go out and get some.

Cornmeal vs. corn masa: Corn masa is tortilla flour. It is more finely ground than cornmeal and yields a more smoothly textured cake. If you substitute a whole cup of corn masa for the cornmeal, the cake will be a bit on the dry, dense side (but still edible). Use 3/4 cup of corn masa and get a tender, moist cake.

Ginger: 2 teaspoons of ginger gives you more of a molasses/spice cake flavor. 4 teaspoons of ginger gives you a cake where the ginger dominates all the other flavors. Your truth may lie somewhere in between.

Molasses: I used second molasses (very nice flavor). The grocery store didn't have blackstrap molasses (very aggressive flavor), which is what I usually use for cooking. When you buy molasses, be sure to check the label and make sure it is 100% molasses, and not corn syrup flavored with molasses.