My friend Dorothy has a New Year's Day party every year where she serves up multiple types of chili. Although Dorothy usually serves cornbread muffins with the chili, I asked if she would mind if I brought some cornbread this year as well, because there was a recipe I had been wanting to try -- Samantha Seneviratne's Pumpkin Maple Cornbread from The New York Times.
The recipe comes together quickly, without a mixer. You mix the liquid ingredients (melted butter, an egg, brown sugar, maple syrup, pumpkin puree, and buttermilk), and fold in the dry ingredients (fine cornmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt). You transfer the batter to a parchment-lined pan, sprinkle pepitas on top, and bake. When the bread is still warm from the oven, you brush the top with a mixture of melted butter and maple syrup.
I had misjudged my timing when I made the cornbread, so it was still warm when I sliced it and packed it up to take it to Dorothy's. The bread was quite damp, and so wet in the center that I actually tossed the slices from the center of the cake in the compost because they seemed too mushy to serve. I'm sure the texture would have been a bit drier if the bread was completely cooled, but because Seneviratne says you can serve it warm, I think the wet texture was likely my fault from underbaking it (although a toothpick did come out with moist crumbs attached when I tested it).
As for the rest of the of the cornbread around the perimeter of the pan, the texture was much better. But I just didn't care for this bread. It essentially tasted like pumpkin bread with the grit of cornmeal, with a very sweet topping and a good hit of maple. My favorite part was the pumpkin seeds on top, which added nice texture and flavor. But in my opinion, this hybrid was not as good as either regular cornbread or regular pumpkin bread.
Recipe: "Pumpkin Maple Cornbread" by Samantha Seneviratne, available from The New York Times.
The recipe comes together quickly, without a mixer. You mix the liquid ingredients (melted butter, an egg, brown sugar, maple syrup, pumpkin puree, and buttermilk), and fold in the dry ingredients (fine cornmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt). You transfer the batter to a parchment-lined pan, sprinkle pepitas on top, and bake. When the bread is still warm from the oven, you brush the top with a mixture of melted butter and maple syrup.
Recipe: "Pumpkin Maple Cornbread" by Samantha Seneviratne, available from The New York Times.
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