Variety Corn-Cake

This little book has been in the bookshelf for a while, but hasn't had much - if any - use.  I told Farm Boy that he could help it earn its keep by choosing between two recipes: Sweet Potato Biscuit and Variety Corn-Cake.  

Fortunately for me, he chose Variety Corn-Cake.  I say 'fortunately' because after reading through the biscuit recipe, it seemed like kind of a pain to make.  

Variety, as it turns out, means coconut (and a boatload of baking powder). As I've said before, I am all about the coconut, so I was excited to try this.  Reading through the recipe, it seemed like a pretty standard cornbread recipe, except it is fairly sweet and contains no eggs.  

My slight deviations from the recipe: I used unsweetened coconut and baked it in an 8" cast iron skillet, (a #6 Wagner).  I also placed the pan in the oven while it was heating.  Just before baking, I added about a tablespoon of butter to the pan to melt before pouring in the batter.  This makes for some crusty goodness.

So let me just explain the greige-ness of the following photos...  The last time I purchased cornmeal, my choices were a blue cornmeal milled and packaged by a local company or a yellow cornmeal that is labeled as "medium grind" that I know from past experience is really better suited for use as concrete aggregate than for eating.  So I chose blue.  And let me tell you, it is the best tasting cornmeal I have ever had!  It has a really nice, intense corn flavor and is much softer than the gravel yellow cornmeal.  But I haven't quite adapted to the color.

Okay, this one isn't too greige.

There's some definite greige going on here.

I had some concern that it would be a crumbly mess without the egg, but while it is slightly more crumbly than a standard cornmeal, the overall texture is very light and fluffy.  The flavor of the unsweetened coconut really came through.  I think a sweetened coconut would be too much, although you might be able to cut the sugar a bit, if that's all you had.  I also now think you could add some sugar and coconut to any regular cornbread recipe and get something pretty tasty.  

Farm Boy and I both really liked this.  It was good warm, cold and even waffled!  With lots of butter and honey, of course.  We will definitely have this one again.

Mmmm, waffled Corn Cake!  And look, it's less greige!